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White storks back in Britain after hundreds of years
These beautiful birds could be about to become a feature of the British landscape again
A The last definitive record of a pair of white storks successfully breeding in Britain was in 1416, from a nest on St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh. No one knows why storks disappeared from our shores. They often featured on the menus of medieval banquets so we might, quite simply, have consumed them all. But there could be a more ominous reason. Storks are migrants arriving after the end of winter, nesting on rooftops and happily associating with humans, and because of this they have long been a symbol of hope and new life. Yet their association with rebirth also meant they became a symbol of rebellion. Shortly after the restoration of King Charles II in 1660, while storks were rare but surviving, parliament debated putting greater effort into destroying them entirely for fear they might inspire republicanism. Today, fortunately, that notion has disappeared and the stork retains its association with new life, appearing on cards given to celebrate the arrival of a new child, as a bird carrying a baby in a sling held in its beak.
B So, after such a long absence, there was great excitement when in April of this year a pair of white storks built an untidy nest of sticks in the top branches of a huge oak in the middle of our rewilding project at Knepp Estate in West Sussex. Drone footage, taken before the pair started sitting on them, showed three large eggs. The fact that they were infertile and did not hatch was not too disappointing. The pair are only four years old, and storks can live to over thirty, with their first attempts to breed often failing. Prospects for next year are encouraging. These young storks are part of a project to return the species to Britain, inspired by reintroductions in European countries that more than reached their target. Imported from Poland, they have spent the best part of three years in a six-acre pen with a group of other juveniles and several injured, non-flying adults, also from Poland. Other birds have already shown strong loyalty to the site. Two years ago, a young bird from Knepp flew across the Channel to France and, this summer, returned to its companions.
C In the face of reports of unrelenting ecological loss (the UN estimates a million species are on the brink of extinction globally), the white stork’s return is refreshing news. As tens of thousands of people demonstrate about the growing climate crisis and eco-anxiety besets us, these glimpses of restoration are important. Featuring the storks in BBC television’s Springwatch in June, the ecologist Chris Packham described the project as ‘imaginative, intelligent, progressive and practical’.
D And yet its path to restoration in the UK has not been smooth. Support from conservation bodies has been surprisingly difficult to obtain; some were hard- pressed with their own initiatives, while others were simply reluctant to stick their necks out. In addition, the committee of the Sussex Wildlife Trust raised doubts about the stork ever having been a British bird. They also had concerns that English-bred birds would migrate across the Channel, and feared that their messy nests and closeness to humans would cause a hazard – rubbish falling down people’s chimneys.
So how has the reintroduction project managed to get going? What makes it in some ways special is that it has had to rely on private individuals actually building the introduction pens themselves and feeding the birds at their own expense. The expertise of tiny yet determined conservation charities such as the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation – responsible for the successful reintroductions of ospreys and white-tailed eagles to Britain – has been very welcome. And the support of Cotswold Wildlife Park, which quarantined the original Polish birds and continues to manage and cover the costs of the captive-breeding programme using its own well- trained staff and excellent facilities, has proved invaluable.
E Across Europe, as stork populations have suffered from the draining of wetlands and disappearance of insect-rich pastures and meadows, their loss has been felt deeply. A few years ago, a tearful old woman in a village in Belarus showed me the nest on her roof, empty of storks for the first time in living memory. Where storks have been reintroduced, they are greeted with great happiness and some historical stork festivals have been restored. The Spanish erect poles for nests along their motorways, and in Alsace householders install cartwheels for storks to build nests on their roofs. During a cold snap in Bulgaria last March, villagers even gave white storks access to their homes.
F A driving motivation behind the project in the UK is the aspiration that the storks’ return will spark feelings of empathy and affection from townspeople who see their nests on rooftops. They might also encourage the public to feel worried about the wider area where they fly off to feed on earthworms, grasshoppers and frogs. White storks could be that charismatic species that connects urban communities directly with landscape restoration. Certainly, people once loved them here. The name of our local village, Storrington, was originally ‘Estorcheton’ or ‘home of the storks’. The public response has been overwhelming, with crowds coming to see white storks flying free in England for the first time in hundreds of years, and private landowners queueing up to offer more introduction sites. The flight of the white stork over Britain is the triumph of practical action over bureaucracy, self-interest and negativity.
