In your report ("Sea eagles risk to wildlife on island", The Herald, May 17) a spokesman for Scottish Natural Heritage says lambs taken by eagles are either dead or in poor condition and that the agency is helping farmers improve the condition of their sheep.
Without a supply of small or dead lambs what will the eagle turn to? Larger specimens, of course, or sea birds, especially fulmars, whose numbers are under threat.
In the same article, RSPB Mull officer Dave Sexton says more puffins are breeding on the Treshnish Isles than prior to the reintroduction of the white-tailed eagle in 1975, but how does he know anything about conditions on Mull and the western Highlands before he came to the island in 1984?
Like many nature-lovers, Mr Sexton has accepted as true the story publicised by the RSPB and SNH since the 1970s, ascribing the eagle's extinction solely to persecution. But for two centuries intensive commercial fishing steadily diminished stocks of the fish which played a vital part in the eagle's diet. A study in 1983 claimed fish still made up an important part of the eagle's diet, but that "fish remains left little trace" – naturally, since few fish remains were present. In 2006 it was admitted that numbers of the eagles were not rising satisfactorily. Instead of asking why, RSPB and SNH sought permission to introduce even more eagles to a location on the east coast.
What will RSPB do now to protect the rest of our wildlife, especially sea birds?
Brenda Galbraith,
Drumfingal, Dervaig,
Isle of Mull.
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