Conservationists have drawn up plans to reintroduce Ospreys to Suffolk.
The Suffolk Wildlife Trust has teamed with experts from the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation and the Leicestershire and Wildlife Trust, who were behind the reintroduction of Ospreys to Rutland Water in the late 1990s. The Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation is also a lead player in the reintroduction of Ospreys to Poole Harbour and White-tailed eagles to the Isle of Wight.
Assuming the project gets the go-ahead from Natural England, the five-year plan is to move up to eight juvenile ospreys per year to Suffolk from the Rutland Water area in the East Midlands where a healthy population is now established.
The team has just completed a public consultation and is now preparing to submit a licence application to Natural England.
For more details about the proposal, please visit the Osprey project page at the Suffolk Wildlife Trust website here
Raptor Persecution UK 
Having lived in Suffolk for several years I am sure that this will be of great benefit to the area. Already a favourite place for wildlife tourism, this can only be welcomed.
Heard a secret , that Ospreys fly twice a year though most counties in the uk.
They should be allowed to populate this country naturally.
Experts should learn to stop meddling, if the hedgehog cannot show their negative policy’s over the last 50 years nothing can..
Wild life trusts have become nothing more than zoos using so called public assets to charge the public while refusing to accept any form consultation.
Perhaps you could enlarge your hedgehog theory a tad? So, you would oppose Natural England’s hen harrier ‘brood meddling’ scheme I presume?
We are still combating the “experts” who eliminated ospreys in the first place.
These introductions are to be welcomed. Like Red Kites, like Ospreys nest close to their natal area so spread can be slow. This release will help speed up their colonisation of England.
We are still combating the “experts” who eliminated ospreys in the first place.
These introductions are to be welcomed. Like Red Kites, like Ospreys nest close to their natal area so spread can be slow. This release will help speed up their colonisation of England.
It’ll be interesting to see what objections to this the fevered imagination of Bill Makinstuffup manages to produce.
As my journey to this page started when we stumbled across the Dyfi Osprey Project in 2013, I can only say what a good idea!
I’m betting there’ll be some whingeing from some in the angling lobby that this is bringing yet another predator in to eat their precious fish, there’ll be others who know this is ridiculous at the best of times and with the osprey especially ludicrous, but it will be interesting to see what the proportions of each faction are given the abuse that’s being hurled at the otter. Of course if they were the great nature lovers and conservationists they claim to be the angling clubs would be at the very forefront of pushing for bringing the osprey back – they’d have more chance than anyone else of seeing them. I would love to see this cynical assessment proved wrong, but wouldn’t hold my breath.
This is brilliant news – sort of mirroring what’s happening on the south coast with ospreys being brought in to Poole harbour and then a bit further along sea eagles on the Isle of Wight. If all goes well there’ll be ospreys in Suffolk and not too far up the road sea eagles being released at Wild Ken Hill in Norfolk. There can’t be any real obstacles to the former at all and I’m feeling very optimistic about the latter getting the go ahead. Translocations and reintroductions seem to be snowballing now, there have been so many publicly supported ones for beavers, white storks, great bustard, ospreys, water voles, pine martens that it looks like a tipping point’s been reached where the default setting for any new proposal is excitement and positivity, not doom and gloom, with the ‘locals’ who love playing the victim card now getting drowned out by the sensible and sincere. Sadly the lynx looks like the exception that proves that rule, but here too things might be loosening up a bit. There’re even proposals to bring back the burbot, the world’s only freshwater cod, which the UK lost almost certainly due to habitat destruction and pollution. Are local wildlife trusts now actively looking to set up a high profile reintroduction/translocation projects, because they’ll look left out if they don’t? Not the worst thing in the world even if true. All of this is bad news for those who want to maintain large areas of ecologically degraded land and slaughter predators so they can kill for fun, the tide’s turning.
Cant argue with that..so I wont!..However..we need to do far more to provide the environment, including of course prey, for these reintroduced birds and animals. Im particularly concerned about how poor our inshore fisheries have become – something dear to my heart as an angler.The diference between my childhood catches from the shore in places like the Firth of Clyde and the Berwickshire coast and recent attempts is huge. Birds like Sea Eagle and Osprey should hugely benefit from restrictions on trawling of precious fish spawning grounds..if they come in.Similarly better management of our river catchments – planting of deciduous trees, stopping the destructive cycle of huge clearfell of conifer plantations, stopping the encroachment of chemical sodden crops up to the edge of feeder streams etc etc..With those sort of improvements things will be better for both human and animal predators..at the moment its all a bit of a recipe for conflict.
I’m not in a position to say anything about the state of inshore fisheries, but re rivers, streams and lakes the situation is bloody terrible. I’m pally with the volunteer bailiff on the local salmon river (well what passes for a salmon river in the central belt), an ex gamekeeper as it happens. He’s a bit of a rare fish himself as he appreciates that dead trees and wood in rivers are perfectly natural and in fact necessary to provide young fish in particular with cover from predators, more invertebrates to feed on and shelter from increasing flows during spates. Great stuff. One of his biggest problems is that he has to deal with complaints about how ‘ugly’ the river looks with dead trees in it. The lunacy is that his very own angling club promotes itself to the public on the basis it clears dead trees out of the river, it doesn’t say why just states it as if it’s self explanatory why that’s a good thing. Of course it’s actually disastrous for wildlife. The infuriating thing is that quite a few of the ‘hi heid yins’ in the club know this too, but keep stoom because they don’t want to tick off the rank and file in it.
This is one of the key reasons I left angling, I had a half decent knowledge of ecology and fully loved wildlife and its conservation – that meant I didn’t fit in. Ever since Leeds University’s EMBER report came out a few years ago now I’ve been contacting angling organisations and clubs and pointing out its results show that muir burn for grouse shooting buggers up watercourses and is particularly damaging for trout and salmon, something two fishery scientist friends of mine have confirmed. Initially one organisation emailed me back with an acknowledgement, although they’ve since gone quiet. Apart from that absolute zilch, not one single syllable in response even to rebuff, I assume because they can’t. No let up though in blaming otters, mergansers, cormorants, goosanders, seals and even bottlenose dolphins for killing off salmon and of course vilifying the beaver. Well the salmon co-existed and evolved with all of them for millennia (might be a reason hen salmon produce approx 600 eggs per pound of body weight), but it never had to contend with muir burn for grouse shooting which affects watercourses long after they’ve left grouse moors.
The angling community has done near sweet FA in tackling the degradation of freshwater ecosystems, they’ve also not said a word about farming operations being carried out right up to the water’s edge allowing farm chemicals and bucket loads of eroded soil to pour straight in to the detriment of just about every living thing in the river. I will say this for the rural set they don’t air their dirty linen in public. Yesterday I got into a bit of a barney with someone on social media re predictably negative comments after a local paper in Northampton wrote up a glowing article about an otter that turned up on a park lake. In order to try and rile me he stated that ghillies in Scotland are now putting high power painkillers in bits of chicken and fish on the riverbank to kill off otters. I’ve heard that a similar tactic is being used with pine martens. There are a few angling clubs that are planting trees and even putting dead wood in rivers, but this is far more typical of the shite you get a repetition of the crap from the grouse moors about needing to ‘control’ predators. I had been in the process of setting up a petition for Scotgov about the need to independently look into the possible effects of muir burn on our game fishing industry that was also going to point out the angling community itself has ignored this yet continued on the whole to blame predation – an opportunity to point out double standards in the field sports sector. The petition system is being revamped so that’s on hold for now, but it will happen. If you’re an ecologically literate angler and you’re conscientious about conservation then your biggest enemy is other anglers.
Dave you’ve probably seen this video – it’s relevant to the issues you mentioned, but just in case you haven’t it’s the most powerful one I’ve seen about any topic, one of those that you just wish you could make every man, woman and child in the country sit down and watch at the same time. An awful lot of the supposed conflict between beavers and farming would be avoided if farms pulled back from going right up to the water’s edge. The issue is bad farming practice rather than beavers being a nuisance and as nearly 40% of our food gets chucked no problem giving a buffer back to natural processes, unless of course people are more interested in wasting food than keeping their homes dry. The principles of hydrology don’t change the moment you step over on to a grouse moor, there should be riparian tree planting on them too – which obviously creates firebreaks as an added benefit, but this runs counter to intensive grouse moor ‘management’. https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=wild+trout+trust+videos&docid=608043816555251008&mid=F50EE655F4F677EE2F63F50EE655F4F677EE2F63&view=detail&FORM=VIRE
Excellent film, Les. Thanks.