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Red kite
Red kites survived in Wales while disappearing from much of Britain. Releases in the Chilterns began in 1989. Their forked tails eventually became a familiar sight over towns and farmland in an area that had lost the birds.
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White-tailed eagle
Young white-tailed eagles from Norway were released on Rum beginning in 1975. In 1985, a chick fledged on Mull, the first in Scotland in about 70 years. For a bird that takes years to mature, those releases were the start of a long wait.
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Osprey
Ospreys were already breeding again in Scotland when a project began moving Scottish chicks to Rutland Water in 1996. A male from the releases raised a chick near the reservoir in 2001 with a female from Scotland. It was the first recorded breeding in central England in over 150 years.
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Eurasian beaver
The Scottish Beaver Trial brought Eurasian beavers to Knapdale in 2009. Researchers followed how the released families settled and how their activity changed woodland and water. The evidence helped guide later decisions about keeping beavers in Scotland.
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European pine marten
Pine martens had become scarce in Wales when conservationists began moving animals from Scotland. Between 2015 and 2017, the Vincent Wildlife Trust released 51 in mid-Wales. Subsequent sightings and camera records helped the team follow their spread.
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Great bustard
Great bustards disappeared as a breeding bird in Britain in the 19th century. The release project on Salisbury Plain began in 2004. Great Bustard Group later documented chicks produced in the wild, a milestone beyond getting hand-reared birds through their first year.
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Large blue
The large blue disappeared from Britain in 1979. To bring it back, researchers restored the short, warm turf where its host ants can live. The butterfly’s caterpillars spend part of their development inside ant nests, so restoring flowers alone would never have been enough.
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Pool frog
England lost its native northern pool frogs in the 1990s. Researchers found that Swedish frogs belonged to the same northern form and brought some to England in 2005. This picture represents the species as a whole. The release used that particular northern population.
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White stork
The White Stork Project worked to establish a breeding population in southern England. White stork chicks hatched at Knepp in 2020. That is a more concrete milestone than a record of a bird passing through, since it shows that a pair nested successfully.
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European wildcat
By 2023, the case for restoring wildcats in Scotland was urgent. Saving Wildcats began releasing captive-bred animals in the Cairngorms that year. In 2024, researchers recorded kittens born to released females, an early milestone while the project continued to monitor their survival.
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Corn crake
After corncrakes vanished from much of mainland Britain, a pilot project released captive-bred birds at the Nene Washes in eastern England. The birds need tall cover, so the trial went hand in hand with managing the wet grassland. The project recorded at least one case of breeding in the wild.
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Cirl bunting
Cirl buntings hung on in Devon after disappearing from Cornwall. In 2006, a project began taking a small number of Devon chicks for hand-rearing and release in Cornwall. Later breeding records showed that some of those birds had settled and raised young.
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Carterocephalus palaemon
The chequered skipper died out in England while surviving in Scotland. A restoration team prepared woodland habitat in Northamptonshire and released butterflies from Belgium in 2018. Surveys later confirmed animals from new generations at the site.
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