“We are thrilled that the first home grown Irish bred white-tailed eagle, a female bred in Clare in 2015, has produced her own chicks and reared them successfully with a Norwegian male” said Dr. Allan Mee. “This is a hugely important milestone for the project and, we hope, the first of many of a new generation of Irish bred chicks to Irish parents. In addition, the release of young eagles on Lough Derg and the Shannon Estuary will be critical in helping bolster the existing population and form the basis of a viable self-sustaining Irish population. The signs are good that we can achieve this with 10 or more pairs likely to breed annually over the next few years. Eagles are now nesting again in some of our most iconic scenic and cultural landscapes such as near Holy Island (Inis Cealtra) on Lough Derg, the Killarney lakes, Connemara, Glengarriff and on the western tip of the Iveragh peninsula in Kerry, where they would have nested in historical times, perhaps even on the same islands used back in the 18th and 19th centuries. It’s wonderful to see these birds back where they belong, nesting and rearing chicks”.