Mass slaughter of the red kites

NEARLY half of Scotland's red kite population is thought to have been illegally killed, it was revealed yesterday.

Experts studied tagged birds over a five-year period and the results of their monitoring show persecution of the rare species remains a massive problem.

Poisoning, which helped to wipe out red kites in Scotland nearly 150 years ago, is still hampering their fight for survival.

Most of the kites that fledged in Scotland since their reintroduction in the late 1980s have been wing-tagged, which has allowed the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) to build up a picture of the fragile population north of the Border.

Preliminary analysis indicates 38 per cent of the 395 birds that fledged between 1999 and 2003 were poisoned, and 9 per cent were shot or otherwise killed by man. These are considered conservative estimates.

According to the RSPB, land managers leave poisoned bait, using agricultural pesticides, in the open countryside to kill crows, birds of prey and other species seen as a threat to grouse and other game birds, even though the practice has been illegal since the early 1900s.

While red kites are rarely the intended victims, their carrion-feeding makes them highly likely to find any poisoned meat left lying around.

Of the 395 birds tagged up to 2003, only 49 were known to be alive this month. Thirty were found dead, including 13 that were illegally poisoned and three that had been shot.

A further 307 tagged birds have not been seen for three years and are presumed dead.

The RSPB says that, assuming the post-mortem results are representative of these missing birds, 185 red kites are estimated to have been deliberately killed between 1999 and 2006 - 150 by poisoning.

Duncan Orr Ewing, the head of species and land management for RSPB Scotland, said:

"It may take a custodial sentence before people engaged with this activity begin to take the matter seriously.

"Unfortunately, Scotland contributes some 52 per cent of birds of prey recorded as illegally killed in the UK - a statistic which shames us all."

FRIEND TO FOE

RED kites were once valued as scavengers in the UK and protected by a Royal decree. By the 16th century, however, they were seen as vermin and killed by man, becoming extinct in England in 1871 and Scotland in 1879, before their relatively recent reintroduction.

There are estimated to be only 20,000 breeding pairs in the world. The red kite's strongholds are in Spain, France and Germany.