A furious row has broken out between crofters in the remote western Highland moors and the RSPB after the conservation charity rubbished claims that sea eagles have been taking lambs.

The farmers, to the anger of conservationists, say that sea eagles have been targeting their lambs and destroying their already meagre income.

They claim that in the past few weeks hundreds of lambs have been killed by the birds, which are being reintroduced gradually to the country after being hunted to extinction in Britain in 1918.

The group of about 30 crofters in Gairloch in Wester Ross claim that their livelihood is being jeopardised by the loss of lambs before the autumn sales.

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“It is not viable, with these losses. We can’t see a future in this area with the sheep if the birds keep killing lambs,” said Willie Fraser, chairman of Gairloch and Poolewe branch of the Crofting Foundation. “We’ve seen lambs — strong, heavy animals — that have been caught by sea eagles, caught by their necks and their arteries cut so that they can’t lift their heads. One crofter has lost 50 per cent of her lambs.”

One woman had even seen an eagle killing a lamb, Mr Fraser said. “When she went up towards it, it flew off. But later, when she went back to the field, she saw the bird on top of the lamb.”

He said that vets had examined the lambs’ carcasses and reportedly found talon damage and injuries caused by being dropped from a height. Another crofter described going close to a sea eagle’s nest and finding what he described as a sheep’s graveyard.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds described the claims of some crofters as nonsense and said that the birds would have taken only carrion. It said that the birds thrived mainly on a diet of herring gulls, fulmars and fish fed to them by friendly trawlermen.

Chris Tyler, an RSPB warden, said that some local crofters claimed with “a straight face” that as many as 850 lambs had been taken by the birds.

RSPB Scotland and Scottish Natural Heritage have introduced 59 eagles on the West Coast since 1993. Another 15 white-tailed sea eagles were released in the country last month. In Wester Ross, according to the RSPB, there are only three nesting pairs. Last Friday one of the society’s wardens visited a nest near Gairloch and found the bones of sheep carcasses.

Mr Tyler said of the crofters’ claims: “It was nonsense. We were watching the sea eagle’s nest. We saw a total of three lamb carcasses come into the nest and did post-mortems on them all and they proved to be carrion.”

Mr Fraser said, however, that what was seen on the nest sites did not reflect the birds’ hunting patterns.

“The RSPB are not seeing them take the lambs on the hills. They only see the nests. We see the birds on the hill taking lambs because we are up here all summer,” he said.

Jonnie Hall, head of rural policy at NFU Scotland, said that he had no problem with species being brought into Scotland but farmers must be consulted. “We have to be more than careful because the consequences of reintroducing something into what is already a pretty fragile environment where there are already lots of rules and regulations for species management is going to cause all sorts of issues.”

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