Britain's Biggest Bird of Prey Returns to Exmoor — and Farmers Are Not on Board

On 13 May 2026, Natural England announced it had issued an 11-year licence permitting the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation and Forestry England to release up to 20 white-tailed eagles (Haliaeetus albicilla) in Exmoor National Park over the next three years [1]. The birds — Britain's largest raptor, with a wingspan exceeding 2.4 metres — last bred along the Exmoor coast more than 200 years ago [2]. Their return is framed by the government as part of a £90 million "Wild Again" species recovery programme [3].

The National Farmers' Union calls the plan reckless. Conservation groups call it overdue. The evidence on both sides is more nuanced than either camp tends to acknowledge.

The Isle of Wight Precedent

The Exmoor release builds on a programme that began on the Isle of Wight in 2019. Since then, 45 juvenile white-tailed eagles have been released, all fitted with satellite tracking tags [1]. Four territorial pairs have established themselves along the south coast, and in 2023 a pair fledged the first wild-born white-tailed eagle chick in England in over 240 years [4]. Five additional chicks have hatched since [3].

Crucially for the livestock debate, the Isle of Wight programme has recorded zero incidents of predation on lambs or other livestock across six years of monitoring and more than 5,000 hours of direct observation [1][5].

Diet data collected by Forestry England project officer Steve Egerton-Read, based on over 600 prey observations, breaks down as follows: birds constitute 36% of the diet (Canada goose being the most frequent species), fish 25% (with grey mullet a favoured catch), mammals 24% (primarily rabbits and brown hares), and carrion 15% [5].

Source: Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation / Forestry England

Data as of Dec 1, 2024CSV

The absence of livestock from this diet profile is central to Natural England's rationale for approving the Exmoor licence. But critics point out that the Isle of Wight's farming landscape — dominated by arable and mixed lowland agriculture — bears little resemblance to Exmoor's upland sheep country.

Why Exmoor?

Natural England's licence decision rested on several lines of evidence. Tracking data from Isle of Wight birds showed multiple individuals had already visited the Exmoor area of their own accord [1]. Historical records confirm white-tailed eagles formerly bred on the Exmoor coastline [2]. The park's combination of coastal woodland, moorland, and abundant marine fish stocks — particularly grey mullet in the Bristol Channel — was assessed as providing suitable habitat [2][6].

The feasibility work was led by the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation, the same organisation that managed the Isle of Wight programme. The project partners — Forestry England, the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation, and the Exmoor National Park Authority — conducted the studies [1]. Natural England assessed the application against Defra's Code for Reintroductions and Conservation Translocations [1].

However, no independent carrying capacity analysis appears to have been published for Exmoor specifically. The publicly available feasibility studies focus on habitat suitability and historical presence rather than modelling prey density thresholds or maximum sustainable breeding pairs within the park's boundaries [2][6]. This is a gap that critics have highlighted.

What Farmers Fear

The NFU does not support the reintroduction [7]. In December 2025, the union submitted a formal letter to Natural England setting out members' concerns and demanding a minimum 20-year commitment from project partners to support land managers as the eagle population establishes [7].

David Chugg, NFU South Regional Board Chair, stated: "Through our engagement we have looked to gain a longer-term commitment for the management of these birds, to ensure that farmers are not burdened with the cost" [7].

The NFU's specific demands include: that project facilitators be held legally and financially liable for released birds, their offspring, and any impacts for 20 years; that farmers receive funded management, mitigation, and compensation assistance; and that farming representatives sit on the project steering group [7].

Exmoor is dominated by Less Favoured Area (LFA) livestock farms. Sheep have grazed the moors for over 3,000 years, with traditional breeds including Exmoor Horn, Cheviot, and Whiteface Dartmoor [8]. The total number of holdings and the area of farmland on Exmoor have both declined in recent years, while average farm size has increased [9]. Hill farmers operating on tight margins argue they cannot absorb additional predation losses, however small.

Peter Delbridge, chairman of the National Sheep Association, has said local producers fear being unable to protect their flocks once eagle populations become established [10]. The concern is not about the first 20 birds — it is about what happens when those birds breed, their offspring disperse, and the population grows over decades.

The Scottish Record: 50 Years of Data

Scotland provides the closest analogue. White-tailed eagles were reintroduced to the Isle of Rum in 1975 using Norwegian-sourced birds. The population has grown from zero to an estimated 150 breeding pairs, with projections suggesting it could reach 900 pairs by 2040 [11][12].

Source: NatureScot / RSPB monitoring data

Data as of Jan 1, 2025CSV

The growth has not been without conflict. NatureScot's prey remains analysis from 2023 found lamb remains in every examined nest associated with territories suspected of predation, with a minimum of 97 individual lambs identified across those nests [13]. The data confirms that in some cases, white-tailed eagles are bringing freshly killed, previously healthy lambs to their nests [14].

Scottish farmer Ricky Rennie, who farms in Argyll, reported losing up to two-thirds of his lambs in 2024, estimating the financial impact at tens of thousands of pounds annually [10]. His case, while extreme, illustrates the severity of localised impacts.

The Scottish Government's response has been the Sea Eagle Management Scheme (SEMS), launched in 2015 following a joint statement between NFU Scotland and NatureScot [14]. By 2022, the scheme was supporting 158 holdings covering over 143,000 hectares and 66,500 breeding ewes [14]. The annual budget has grown from roughly £310,000 at inception to £970,000 [14][15]. Eligible farms receive £1,800 per year, and the scheme funds enhanced shepherding, indoor lambing transitions, and observation patrols during lambing season [14].

Source: NatureScot

Data as of Jan 1, 2025CSV

Proponents of the Exmoor release argue that the Scottish situation is structurally different. Scotland's white-tailed eagle population is concentrated in the western Highlands and Islands, where remote hill lambing on open moorland is standard practice and human presence during lambing is minimal [14]. Exmoor's farming, while also upland, involves smaller holdings with more intensive shepherding. Additionally, Exmoor's coastal and woodland habitat offers richer alternative prey than some of the sparse Scottish territories where eagles have turned to lambs.

The Norwegian Evidence

Norway hosts Europe's largest white-tailed eagle population — roughly 3,500 breeding pairs. The Norwegian evidence on livestock predation is striking. According to the Norwegian Nature Inspectorate's carcass autopsy scheme, which ran from 1987 to 2017 and examined 166,000 reports of suspected predator kills on livestock, only one case of a white-tailed eagle killing a lamb was verified — in Rogaland in May 2012 [16].

A second incident involved a pair of eagles feeding on an immobilised ewe that was lying on its back; the ewe survived [16]. Over 43 years of the Norwegian Sea Eagle Project, the data shows that white-tailed eagle predation on livestock is a vanishingly rare event in a country with both large eagle and large sheep populations [16].

This stands in contrast to the Scottish data, and the discrepancy merits examination. Norwegian sheep farming practices differ from Scottish ones: Norwegian flocks typically graze in forested mountain areas during summer with different lambing practices, and Norway's vastly larger eagle population has more abundant wild prey. The lesson may be that conflict intensity depends less on eagle numbers than on the overlap between eagle territories and vulnerable lambing practices.

The Compensation Question

The central grievance for farming groups is not just that predation might occur, but that the compensation framework is inadequate and non-binding.

The Exmoor licence includes a project steering group with farming sector representation, GPS tracking of all released birds, a communications plan, and a dedicated project officer [1]. What it does not include, as far as publicly available documents show, is a statutory compensation mechanism for livestock losses [1][7].

The NFU has called for project facilitators to be legally and financially liable [7], but the current framework appears to rest on discretionary goodwill rather than binding legal guarantees. This contrasts with the Scottish SEMS, which while substantial at £970,000 annually, provides management support payments (£1,800 per eligible farm) rather than per-head indemnity for lost animals [14].

In comparison, Scandinavian countries with established eagle populations operate compensation systems tied to verified kills or, in Sweden and Finland, to the number of breeding pairs in a district — a system that avoids the difficulty of proving individual predation events [16]. Norway compensates reindeer herders for losses attributed to all large predators through a centralised scheme with prompt reporting requirements and veterinary verification [16].

No equivalent framework exists in England. The legal basis for the Exmoor release is a species reintroduction licence granted by Natural England under its statutory wildlife licensing powers, operating within Defra's translocation guidelines [1]. Farmers wishing to challenge the decision could in theory seek judicial review, but would need to demonstrate that Natural England acted unlawfully or irrationally in granting the licence — a high legal bar [1].

Regulatory Authority and Legal Recourse

Natural England holds the regulatory authority as the statutory wildlife licensing body for England [1]. Defra sets the policy framework through its Reintroductions and Conservation Translocations Code. The Welsh Government has separate jurisdiction; since Exmoor straddles the Somerset-Devon border entirely within England, Welsh authorities are not directly involved in this licence, though eagles could disperse into Welsh territory [1][2].

There is no planning permission requirement for species releases — the process operates entirely through the wildlife licensing system. Farmers' legal options are limited to judicial review of Natural England's decision, which would require demonstrating procedural or legal error rather than simply disagreeing with the policy [1].

Population Projections and Dispersal

Research on white-tailed eagle dispersal shows that juveniles typically range up to 200 km from their natal site in their first two years before settling to breed, with median natal dispersal distances of 21–45 km for males and 47–58 km for females [6][12].

If Exmoor follows the Isle of Wight pattern, the project aims to establish 6–8 breeding pairs within 60 km of the release site [6]. Over longer timeframes, a rolling programme of releases at further sites is planned [2]. Population modelling from Scotland suggests that with sustained breeding success, a southern England meta-population — combining Isle of Wight and Exmoor birds — could number several dozen pairs within 25 years and expand across a substantial geographic range [12].

Farming regions that could fall within the modelled dispersal range include the Somerset Levels, north Devon, south Wales, and Dorset — areas with significant livestock operations. The RSPB and NatureScot's population modelling for Scotland projected that the national population could exceed 200 breeding pairs by 2025 and potentially reach 900 by 2040, demonstrating how reintroduced populations can grow far beyond initial release numbers [12].

The Case Against

The strongest argument against reintroduction is not that eagles will devastate Exmoor's sheep flocks — the Isle of Wight and Norwegian data suggest that is unlikely at the scale opponents fear. The stronger case is about institutional preparedness.

The Scottish SEMS took 40 years after the first reintroductions to establish and still faces criticism from farmers who say payments do not cover actual losses [14][15]. England has no equivalent scheme. The Exmoor licence was granted without a statutory compensation mechanism in place [1][7]. If the population grows as projected and some pairs do settle in territories overlapping with intensive lambing areas, affected farmers will have no legal right to compensation — only the goodwill of project partners and whatever ad hoc funding the government may later provide.

Some land managers also question whether Exmoor's ecosystem can support a viable eagle population long-term without creating dependence on artificial feeding or ongoing human management. The publicly available feasibility work has not addressed this question with published population viability analyses specific to Exmoor [2][6]. White-tailed eagles require large territories, and if natural prey proves insufficient in some territories, birds may range more widely into farming areas — precisely the pattern that generates conflict in Scotland [14].

What Happens Next

The first releases are expected this summer. All birds will carry satellite tags, and the project team will monitor their movements, diet, and breeding attempts over an 11-year licence period [1]. The project steering group, which includes farming representatives, will oversee implementation [1][7].

The £90 million "Wild Again" programme signals that the current government views species reintroduction as a policy priority [3]. Further release sites beyond Exmoor are planned but not yet publicly identified [2].

For Exmoor's hill farmers, the question is whether this time the conservation establishment will build the co-existence infrastructure before problems emerge, rather than decades after — as happened in Scotland. For conservationists, the question is whether a species that was deliberately exterminated from Britain over a century ago can be given a genuine foothold in England without that effort being undermined by political opposition.

Both questions remain open. The eagles, at least, will have their answer this summer.