Haweswater - Is there any chance of bringing golden eagles back to Lakes?

Though the eagles are no more, Haweswater's wildlife is now being given the chance to return, thanks to interventions by the RSPB in collaboration with its landlord, the water company United Utilities.

- Ben Martynoga

Until the last male died in 2015, Haweswater, on the rugged eastern fringe of the Lake District, was England's final refuge for golden eagles. "Even now, whenever I go up Riggindale, it feels like something is missing," says Spike Webb, a long-serving warden at the RSPB's Haweswater site.

The project has reduced sheep numbers by 90%, from more than 3,000 two decades ago to about 300 today. They have also planted more than 100,000 trees, restored 400 hectares (990 acres) of peat bog, and "re-wiggled" a valley bottom stream so it can reoccupy its natural flood plain.

Webb resists the idea that Haweswater is a rewilding project. "It's still a working farm," he says of the site's two farmsteads, in Naddle and Swindale valleys. "We're just doing it less intensively."

Senior site manager and author Lee Schofield is also reluctant to use the "r" word. "Rewilding is hugely exciting to a lot of people," he says. "But up here, it can be an alienating concept, [especially] to farmers."

A key reason for that is the pervasive idea that rewilding - or as Schofield prefers, "ecological restoration" - is synonymous with "land abandonment" and necessarily involves getting rid of people. Former local MP Rory Stewart voiced this concern when he wrote that rewilding "leaves no place for humans in the landscape".

But recent developments at Haweswater show this is not necessarily the case. A decade ago, when the RSPB first took on Haweswater's hill farms, they employed just four staff, the same number who worked there previously. By mid-2023, the team working at and around Haweswater will have increased to 22 full-time equivalents, along with a rotating cast of dozens of volunteers, contractors and casual labourers.

"Knowing that the work we're doing is providing employment for people - really rewarding employment - is brilliant," says Schofield.