Simon Thomsett

Category: Crowned Eagles | Date: Apr 08 2008 | By: admin

The release cont…

In the raising and final release of precious eagles you have this manic sweep of emotions. Everything seems to depend upon the outcome. Sure there is little to be gained in rubbing ones’ face in disappointment, just as much as there is little to be had in only bragging about accomplishments. Both in moderation are fine.

Some hazards facing released eagles just cannot be avoided, they can only be confronted. In working with wildlife, risks have to be taken. This is not often understood by the public, who for the worst possible reasons other than their numerical abundance, are the ones that increasingly have dominion over the direction of wildlife conservation. Evolution isn’t very fair even in the best circumstances, and even they can’t stop it. Sometimes things work out, sometimes they do not. Wild animals in the wild are governed a lot by luck and they gamble each day against the very high odds of survival.

‘Wildlife Management’ means that one tries to make sure that potential problems are avoided. This is intervention of a ‘natural’ process and of course there are those critics that seize upon this and say one must leave everything alone.

Hopefully releases made with the forethought of people and the pot-luck of eagles will end up with a better chance than most. This is a positive step in a sea of opposition facing eagles today.

The good news is that, on the whole, with the help of many organisations and individuals we have succeeded in successfully producing and releasing one of Africa’s largest and most powerful forest eagles. We are proud of the fact that far from falling behind the rest of the world, as is self-depreciatingly often assumed to be the case, we have got a long way in this small aspect of wildlife management. These successes may equal or exceed those made elsewhere in the ‘western’ world in similar projects. For sure this miniscule success pales against the juggernaut of the continent’s problems, but they are successes nevertheless.

Africa is a continent of extremes, with vast depressing troughs and wonderful peaks, great tragedy and joy, human poor and unimaginably wealthy, rain and drought. This fatalism and grandeur within the continent is romanced in endless novels and it does influence us too. Staring out of a bouncing Land Rover one view may be filled with bountiful natural wonder…turn around and it may be unimaginably bad. It is rather manic in character and wildlife conservation seems to go along with it.

The final and core of the release of the Crowned Eagles to follow soon…