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Rewilding success for long-lost bird population

Kent Wildlife Trust / Tim Horton A black-feathered bird with an orange beak and red legs flies mid-air. The background is out of focus trees and sky. Kent Wildlife Trust / Tim Horton
The number of red-billed choughs reintroduced to Kent now tops 19 as part of a rewilding programme

Conservation charities have successfully completed the second round of rewilding of a long-lost bird breed in Dover.

The red-billed chough disappeared from the Kent countryside more than 200 years ago due to habitat loss and persecution.

In 2023, the first cohort of eight birds were returned to the area by conservation charities Wildwood Trust, Kent Wildlife Trust and Cornwall's Paradise Park.

Now a further 11 birds have been raised in captivity and released near Dover.

Kent Wildlife Trust has worked with English Heritage, the National Trust and White Cliffs Countryside Partnership over 40 years to restore a suitable grassland for the birds.

The charity's conservation director Paul Hadaway said: "Chalk grassland is an incredibly rare habitat and is considered the UK's equivalent of the rainforest."

The birds are members of the corvid family which includes rooks, ravens, crows and magpies.

This year's set of choughs consisted of six females who were creche-reared at Wildwood Trust, just outside Canterbury.

A further six males were reared at Paradise Park's zoo-based breeding programme in Cornwall.

'Flying free'

The charities said they were pleased when a chough chick was found in a nest at Dover Castle in May, a sign the released birds were breeding in the wild.

But the chick went missing days later due to strong winds.

Wildwood Trust's conservation director Laura Gardner said: “While we were disappointed by the disappearance of the chick we were heartened by the fact that its very existence showed that creating an established breeding population of chough in the wild in Kent for the first time in generations was very much within our reach.

“Little more than two years ago there was no chance of seeing a chough in the South Eastern sky line now there are 19 flying free over Dover."

Kent Wildlife Trust / Tim Horton A red-billed chough stands on a sheep's back in a grassy field. The sheep has blue P spray painted onto its back.Kent Wildlife Trust / Tim Horton
The bird disappeared from Kent 200 years ago due to habitat loss

The project aims to release up to 50 choughs in the Dover countryside by 2028.

Earlier this year, 108 choughs fledged successfully in Cornwall, according to charity Cornwall Birds.

The Kent Wildlife Trust and Wildwood Trust have already worked together to reintroduce bison, Iron Age pigs, Exmoor ponies and longhorn cattle to the area.

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