Roy Dennis specialises in the translocation of species: moving birds, in this case osprey chicks, from one area to another, to help grow the population. This is hands-on conservation: the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation prides itself on its direct and proactive approach to wildlife conservation.

It is year three of a five-year project, with the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation, working in collaboration with the conservation charity Birds of Poole Harbour, aiming to send a total of 60 young ospreys from the Highlands of Scotland to the south coast of England.  It's not that Scotland has 'enough' ospreys and can afford to pass some on: it's more that a population at saturation point, as it is in Roy's study area, means that birds have less chance of breeding.  If some young are moved, the idea is that they will return from migration, if they survive, to find a mate in their adopted area, and have the space to breed there without undue competition from other ospreys.

In recordings made largely as they carry out their fieldwork, Roy and his team (Tim Mackrill and tree climbers Fraser Cormack and Ian Perks) describe the privilege of working with these special creatures, and of being allowed an insight into the lives of a species which, only recently, was on the brink of extinction in the UK.

Roy has worked in conservation all his life and has seen the osprey population grow from a single pair in Scotland in 1960, the only ones in the UK at that time, to two pairs in 1963 - a slow growth in the face of egg thieves and persecution - until now, when there are around 300 pairs in Scotland, a small population in the north of England, ten pairs at Rutland Water (where Roy carried out a translocation project in the 1990s) and a further small population which has spread from there into Wales.

Future podcasts will follow the osprey chicks' journey from Scotland to Poole Harbour, their weeks there spent 'learning' their new landscape and, once they can fly, their eventual release back into the wild.

Music credit:  Realness by Kai Engel, from the Free Music Archive
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/


Contributors in order of appearance:
Roy Dennis
Tim Mackrill
Ian Perks
Fraser Cormack

Producer: Moira Hickey