Tony Cross of the Welsh Kite Trust adds "We knew from tag sightings that at least some of the pioneering kites that first bred in West England, in Herefordshire and Shropshire, were descendants of the original British stock but we also knew, despite a lack of evidence from marked birds, that there was highly likely to have been some ingress from the re-introduced birds derived from Spanish and German populations. "The research also detected evidence that the re-introduced kites have started to mate with Welsh birds." "Despite being capable of daily flights of over 100km and a significant expansion in numbers and geographical range, the Northern and Southern birds are choosing to nest close to where they were born, maintaining a partially stable genetic barrier over 30 breeding seasons. Robert McMahon, Research Associate at IBERS Phenomics Centre overseeing Ilze's research work explains, "Field studies of ringed birds in the 1970s had suggested that the Kites tended to nest close to where they had hatched, but this is the first indication of the genetic significance of this behaviour in what otherwise looks like a single population undergoing expansion from 100-1000 breeding pairs over the intervening years. "Using the cutting edge facilities in the Translational Genomics laboratory at IBERS and novel genetic markers developed in our lab, I was not only able to reconfirm that the modern Welsh kite population still fall into a Northern and Southern groups (as had been detected in the 1980s using the single genetic fingerprint probe available at the time) but also detect a genetic difference between the older Central-Welsh and the relatively new Red kite population in Shropshire and Herefordshire." The molecule acts like a bar-code and provides geneticists with information about the relations between populations and individuals. "This proved to be an efficient and most importantly, non-invasive way of collecting DNA. Ilze said "I accompanied Professor Mike Hayward of the Welsh Kite Trust and Tony Cross of Ecology Matters and Consultant Ornithologist to the Welsh Kite Trust, on their nest monitoring and chick tagging visits across the traditional core areas of the species in Wales and the contact areas between the expanding Welsh and English populations in Shropshire and Herefordshire and gathered cast feather samples and extracted DNA from the feathers. This has been one of the most successful reintroduction programs of any species and Red Kites are now a common site across England and Scotland with an estimated 1,800 breeding pairs in the UK. From the late 1960s the Welsh population increased slowly and reached around 100 pairs by 1990.Īs a result of the relatively slow rate of expansion and recolonization of old habitats, supporters initiated a centralised Red Kite re-introduction program across the rest of the UK using some birds from Wales but mainly birds from other European populations.
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