No more cash to monitor red kite numbers
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FRAGILE red kite populations in the Highlands are no longer being monitored by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) after cash for the work ran out.
Funding dried up more than a year ago, raising fears that a repeat of the mass poisoning which left 22 birds of prey dead on the Black Isle in 2014 could go undetected.
Brian Etheridge, who retired from the red kite monitoring role in April 2016, said he was disappointed no-one had replaced him.
He said the red kite would be the first bird of prey to display symptoms in the event of another poisoning.
"It’s the canary in the coal mine," he said. "Anything nasty that’s going on in the countryside the red kite would be the one that would show it."
The RSPB’s conservation project officer Stuart Benn agreed it could potentially take longer to detect a future poisoning without a paid official in post.
But he believes it is unlikely to happen on the same scale again and said money was no longer available to fund the role.
Sixteen red kites died around Conon Bridge and the Black Isle in spring 2014. The incident also caused the deaths of six buzzards. Poison was confirmed as the cause of death for many of them.
But police did not solve the mystery and the case was closed.
Mr Etheridge was the first official to cradle one of the poisoned birds in his hands.
The 70-year-old former aircraft engineer of Avoch, who devoted 29 years to the RSPB after the RAF, said he instantly knew something suspicious was going on and increased pressure on the authorities when more dead birds were discovered.
He added: "I don’t think it would all come to the fore quite so quickly if it happened again. I can understand why they’ve stopped monitoring the kites, budgets were being squeezed, but if we have another Black Isle incident it could possibly be overlooked, or there would be nobody really responding in the way that we did."
Mr Benn said some red kites do get looked at on an amateur basis but added: "It’s not as thorough as what Brian was doing and they do not count as many pairs but there is some monitoring. I would not argue with what Brian has said. If something dreadful happened it could potentially take a bit longer than it did before because we had someone going out looking every day.
"In an ideal world if we had unlimited money and unlimited staff we would do all of these things but it’s just not available."
A Scottish Government spokesman said: "After reviewing progress, we were satisfied that the reintroduction has been a success and that the system of volunteers we have in place, supported by the heightened vigilance of the general public, meets the need for our future monitoring."
