A woman who admitted to drinking and who was driving well over twice the speed limit when she smashed into a golf cart, killing a bride who had just got married at a South Carolina beach, was sentenced on Monday to 25 years in prison.

Jamie Lee Komoroski, 27, pleaded guilty at the Charleston county courthouse to reckless homicide, felony DUI causing death and two counts of felony DUI causing great bodily injury before her sentencing.

Police said she drank in several bars on 28 April 2023 and was driving 65mph on a narrow Folly Beach road with a speed limit of 25mph when she slammed into the golf cart, which was leaving a wedding.

The bride, 34-year-old Samantha Miller, died still wearing her wedding dress. The groom suffered a brain injury and numerous broken bones. The cart was thrown 100 yards (91 meters) by the crash.

The groom, Aric Hutchinson, will receive $863,300 in a financial settlement connected to the wreck, according to reports from June. Hutchinson has spoken about losing his wife, describing her as an “amazing human being who should never have been taken”.

In an interview with ABC, he broke down as he struggled to recall the incident. “The last thing I remember her saying is she wanted the night to never end,” Hutchinson told Good Morning America (GMA).

“I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. That night going from an all-time high to an all-time low, it’s pretty tough to try to comprehend,” said Hutchinson on GMA, but declined to comment on Komoroski.

After pleading guilty, Komoroski said she realized now she was addicted to alcohol and did not care how her actions affected others. She promised to spend the rest of her life helping addicts and warning of the dangers of drinking and driving. She said she was “devastated, deeply ashamed and sorry” for what she did.

“I wish I could go back and undo this terrible tragedy. But I cannot. I will live the rest of my life with intense regret for what happened that night,” she said.

Before the sentencing, Miller’s father told Komoroski he was disgusted that she appeared to never take responsibility. He told her she could apologize, but he would not listen to a word.

“The rest of my life I’m going to hate you and when I arrive in hell and you come there, I will open the door for you,” Brad Warner said. “You have ruined so many people’s lives.”

Komoroski, 27, pleaded guilty at the Charleston county courthouse to reckless homicide, felony DUI causing death and two counts of felony DUI causing great bodily injury.

The bride’s mother had previously lashed out at Komoroski, saying she made “a conscious choice” that turned deadly.

“It wasn’t an accident,” Lisa Miller said to Fox News. “This person chose to drink, get behind the wheel and plow down my daughter. This is a conscious choice that a young lady made.”

The Guardian contributed reporting

A judge ruled on Monday that Tesla CEO Elon Musk is still not entitled to receive a $56bn compensation package even though shareholders of the electric vehicle company had voted to reinstate it six months ago.

The ruling by the Delaware judge, Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick of the court of chancery, follows her January decision that called the pay package excessive and rescinded it, surprising investors. The decision cast uncertainty over Musk’s future at the world’s most valuable carmaker. Tesla’s board argued the enormous payment scheme was necessary to keep Musk involved in the company, an argument that the billionaire, already the world’s richest man, echoed.

McCormick also ordered Tesla to pay the attorneys who brought the case $345m, well short of the billions they initially requested.

Tesla has said in court filings that the judge should recognize a subsequent June vote by its shareholders in favor of the pay package for Musk, the company’s driving force who is responsible for many of its advances, and reinstate his compensation. Tesla and its shareholders argued that Musk had reached the milestones originally stipulated when the pay package was drawn up.

Tesla originally devised Musk’s payment package in 2017, setting conditions for Musk to receive 12 different tranches of stock options depending on whether the company hit certain revenue and market targets. Shareholders approved that package by a wide margin in 2018, but one investor filed a suit claiming that the board had been misleading and the package was unfair. Some prominent shareholders such as Norway’s sovereign wealth fund and the California state teachers’ retirement system voted against the pay package to no avail.

When the pay package was approved in June, Musk said in response on stage at a Tesla event: “I just want to start off by saying, hot damn, I love you guys!” He did not immediately respond to McCormick’s most recent decision, but he has lambasted her in the past and urged other business owners to stay away from Delaware, where most US companies file their incorporation paperwork due to friendly tax policies. Musk moved Tesla’s physical headquarters from California to Texas, though the pay package case continued before the Delaware judge.

McCormick previously ruled that Tesla’s board conducted a “deeply flawed” process to determine Musk’s payment.

McCormick found that the board was rife with personal conflicts and stacked with Musk’s close allies, such as his former divorce attorney.

Leaked images of Jaguar’s much-hyped electric concept car have appeared hours before the model’s official unveiling in Miami – revealing a vehicle that may just about live up to its controversial advertising pledge to be radically new.

Early online reaction suggests that the concept car, a sleek long-bonnet electric model in shocking pink, might indeed appear more familiar to fans of Barbie or the Pink Panther than the traditional owners of a Jag.

The most eye-catching features, bar the colours, include the lack of a rear windscreen, with rear-view cameras instead installed under gold patches behind the front wheel.

Above sizeable wheels and wheel arches, the car’s distinctive front end is capped by a windscreen that appears to meld into the side windows, which taper towards the back of the car, contributing to what Autocar describes as “a wraparound effect reminiscent of a racing helmet”.

It is unclear how the leaked images will exactly correspond to the concept car to be revealed in Miami later (at 8pm EST on Monday, 1am BST on Tuesday). Jaguar Land Rover had previously said that its first electric model would be a four-door saloon, but the leaked images appear to show only two doors.

A spokesperson said the firm was “aware of images circulating online ahead of Jaguar’s official reveal at Miami Art Week”.

The interior shots also show a driver’s seat without any speedometer – required by law in most countries – or in-car touchscreen entertainment systems, which are seen as standard features even in mid-range cars.

However, Jaguar confirmed that the colours at least were accurate. The spokesperson said: “For the design vision, we have chosen Miami pink and London blue. Miami pink celebrates the vibrancy of the city while London blue, a modern take on the opalescent silver blue of the E-Type, is a nod to Jaguar’s British heritage.”

The jettisoning of much of that traditional heritage has been trailed in teaser ads featuring diverse models and no actual cars and the tagline “copy nothing”, a break from advertising tradition that has generated widespread publicity and controversy, including criticism of Jaguar in some quarters for selling “woke” cars.

Jaguar executives said that the carmaker had to target a new generation as it transitioned from selling diesel models. The electric car, which is not planned to go on sale until 2026, is expected to retail at more than £100,000.

The carmaker, which is owned by India’s Tata group, has been slower than many rivals to embrace electric cars, selling only one model, the ageing Jaguar I-Pace. However, it is investing £18bn to produce battery versions of its lineup alongside petrol cars. Deliveries of the electric Range Rover, made in its main factory in Solihull in the West Midlands, will start at the end of next year.

A Delta Air Lines passenger who flew from New York to Paris as a stowaway is remaining in France for now after disrupting the return flight to the US that had been booked for her.

The woman, identified as Svetlana Dali, boarded flight 265 – which was full – without a ticket before it departed from John F Kennedy airport in Queens, according to officials. The US’s transportation security administration (TSA) said that while Dali, 57, went through property security channels, she never had a boarding pass or passport checked.

“TSA can confirm that an individual without a boarding pass was physically screened without any prohibited items. The individual bypassed two identity verification and boarding status stations and boarded the aircraft,” the federal agency said in a statement.

Fellow passengers said Dali managed to evade suspicion for a long time aboard the plane by moving from one bathroom to another, without ever taking a seat – but flight attendants eventually caught on.

A video captured by a passenger on the plane shared on social media showed the pilot making an announcement about the stowaway. “They’ve directed us to keep everyone on the airplane until we sort out the extra passenger that’s on that plane,” the pilot said on the announcement.

Upon arriving to Paris, French officials detained Dali, who did not have a visa for the country. French officials told ABC news that she is a Russian national who is a legal resident of the US.

Dali was put on another Delta flight back to the US from Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport. But she became “unruly”, according to a Delta representative. French authorities removed her from the plane, and she remained in the country.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Delta said they were each investigating the episode.

The TSA added it was independently reviewing “the circumstances of this incident at our travel document checker station at JFK”.

“Nothing is of greater importance than matters of safety and security,” Delta said in a statement. “That’s why Delta is conducting an exhaustive investigation of what may have occurred and will work collaboratively with other aviation stakeholders and law enforcement to that end.”

The port authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates JFK, did not respond to a request for comment.

The anti-whaling activist Paul Watson will learn within 14 days whether he will be extradited to Japan, a court has been told, as his four-month imprisonment in Greenland was extended.

At a hearing in Nuuk, the capital of the autonomous territory of Denmark, the judge Lars-Christian Sinkbæk said that Watson, who turned 74 on Monday, would continue to be detained in a high security prison pending a decision from the Danish government. Watson’s legal team immediately submitted an appeal to Greenland’s high court.

Addressing the hearing, Watson, one of the early pioneers behind the environmental campaign group Greenpeace, said: “In July, I had no idea that I would be sitting here in court in Greenland on my birthday today. It is a political case being run against me. It is a minimal case that has been run up. Denmark is known as a very trustworthy legal society, but look what it has become.”

Watson has been in Greenland’s prison, known as the Anstalten, since his arrest on 21 July by a dozen police officers while refuelling his ship, MV John Paul DeJoria. The police were acting on an Interpol red notice issued by Japan.

Tokyo is seeking his extradition on charges of stopping a lawful business, trespass, damage to property and assault relating to the alleged boarding of the Japanese whaling ship Shonan Maru 2 in the Southern Ocean in February 2010. The charges carry a sentence of up to 15 years in jail.

It is accepted by the prosecution that Watson, who has been involved in thwarting whalers for five decades, was not present at the time of the alleged crime. It is instead claimed that he was party to the decision by the activist Peter Bethune to board the vessel and throw a stink bomb on to its deck.

The bomb’s chemical components allegedly lightly injured a member of crew. Watson’s defence disputes that this would be possible.

Bethune was seized by the whalers at the time and given a two-year sentence, suspended for five years. As part of that sentence, he named Watson as a co-conspirator.

On his release, Bethune signed an affidavit in which he claimed to have named Watson in order to get a reduced sentence. Watson’s legal team argue that their client was not involved in the crime and that the charges are insufficiently serious for him to be extradited.

In response, the prosecution told the court on Monday that the charges would probably lead to a one-year prison sentence under Danish law.

The court was informed by Greenland’s chief prosecutor, Mariam Khalil, that “the ministry of justice is gathering the final information from Japan to be able to make a decision” on extradition.

She added: “The Ministry of Justice has confirmed by email on 30 November 2024 that a final decision is expected within 14 days.”

The prosecution sought an extra 28 days of detention but the court gave leave for Watson to be detained until 18 December.

Should the Danish government grant Japan’s extradition request within the next two weeks, Watson would be able to appeal against that decision, opening up the potential for a lengthy legal tussle and further time in jail.

The defence had also claimed that Watson’s regular travels without disturbance since 2012 when the Interpol red notice was issued, including a visit to Monaco to see Prince Albert, illustrated that the decision to request 14 years after the alleged crime was politically motivated.

Khalil said that the Japanese arrest warrant, on which the Interpol red notice was based, had been renewed 28 times since it was first issued in 2010.

At the time of his arrest in Greenland, Watson had been on his way with a 32-strong crew to practise his decades-long policy of “non-violent aggression” by intercepting a new Japanese whaling “mothership”, the ¥7.5bn (£39.4m) Kangei Maru.

In an interview with the Guardian from a prison cell, Watson, who has two sons, aged three and eight, as well as a 44-year-old daughter, said he did not believe he would survive a spell in a Japanese prison should he be extradited.

He said: “I know that if I get sent to Japan, I’m not coming home.”

The Japanese embassy in the UK and the Danish ministry of justice did not respond to a request for comment.

Donald Trump’s allies have fired the opening salvoes of his coming administration’s attack on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the federal agency that enforces and regulates laws on air, soil, and water quality among other crucial environmental and health issues.

In a letter from Republican House leadership to EPA the administrator, Michael Regan, Republicans trained their sites on the agency’s scientific integrity policies that are designed to insulate scientists and research from political interference.

Meanwhile, the incoming chair of the Senate environmental committee in a hearing last week promised to target portions of new PFAS regulations put in place over the last year, a top priority for Trump’s chemical and water utility industry allies.

The Republican House committee on oversight and accountability chair, James Comer, charged in his letter that scientific integrity policies would be used by EPA scientists to “hamstring the incoming Trump administration’s ability to implement their own executive agendas”.

The Republicans promptly moving to shred the integrity policies – which critics say were weak to begin with – demonstrates how party officials are “bending over backwards” to assist Trump in attacking career servants, said Jeff Ruch, a former EPA official now with the Public Employees Environmental Responsibility non-profit.

“They want to clear out all potential obstacles,” Ruch said.

The integrity policies were put in place during Barack Obama’s administration in response to George W Bush political appointees requiring EPA researchers to scrub terms like “climate change” from agency science and reports, and making other politically directed alterations.

The policies include the EPA’s and other administration agencies’ standards for objectivity and accuracy in scientific information, but Ruch said they were too vague under Obama. Among other problems, they didn’t stipulate how investigations would be carried out, or punishments for managers and political appointees who violated the rules.

The policies essentially tasked federal agencies like the EPA “with policing themselves”, Ruch said.

Trump did not attack the policies during his first administration, and his former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, an industry ally, even used them as cover at times because they were so vague that he could claim to be following the rules, Ruch said.

The Biden administration pledged to strengthen the policies, but failed to produce many substantive changes, Ruch said. Still, Comer stated that the policies exist to stop Trump by “enabling career bureaucrats who favor one set of scientific viewpoints to undermine politically accountable agency leaders who seek to base agency actions on differing science”.

Comer ordered the EPA’s Regan to turn over reams of documents detailing the policies and their application.

Ruch said the attack points to two certainties: a stepped-up attack on agency scientists who contradict Trump in the second administration, and a crackdown on research produced by federal scientists.

“There will be blood,” Ruch added.

Meanwhile, Senator Shelley Moore Capito, the incoming chair of the Senate committee on environment and public works, took aim at strong PFAS limits during a recent hearing. Her comments show how years of industry efforts to cast doubt on science used to establish PFAS regulations are being weaponized with the GOP fully in control.

The EPA earlier this year finalized strong new drinking water limits for some PFAS compounds after the agency found virtually no level of exposure is safe to humans. It also designated two of the most common and dangerous PFAS compounds as hazardous substances under the nation’s Superfund laws, which could force industry to pay to clean up the messes.

Moore Capito repeated claims from many of those polluters, some of whom are among her largest campaign donors, alleging the rules were developed off of bad science, and are too expensive for many water utilities to implement. Documents show trade groups representing water utilities are already lobbying Moore Capito and the incoming Trump team to undo the rules.

While questioning a former EPA official who helped develop the rules, Moore Capito accused the EPA of “inconsistent inclusion and exclusion of epidemiology and animal studies, lack of predefined protocol, insufficient transparency”. She said not all scientists agreed on the low drinking water limits, including those on the EPA’s science advisory board.

However, many scientists who have been calling into question the EPA’s process and limits receive industry funding.

Linda Birnbaum, a former EPA water division manager, said there were some industry-aligned individuals on the EPA board who raised questions about the drinking water limits, but the board’s final report was strongly supportive of them.

The Biden administration has made tens of billions of dollars available for water utilities to implement the rules, and utilities continue winning funding through litigation against chemical makers. Meanwhile, the EPA has pledged not to hold small water systems, such as those run by schools, responsible for PFAS pollution.

Still, Capito Moore’s lines of attack are being used as justification to make broader changes to the rules, Birnbaum said.

“There was no major controversy around the rules,” she added. “She is spouting-industry sponsored lines.”

The Norwegian government has paused its plans to mine the deep sea in the Arctic, after pressure from a small leftwing party.

The agreement was reached after the Socialist Left (SV) party said it would not support the government’s budget unless it halted the first round of licences for deep-sea mining exploration, planned for the first half of 2025.

“This puts a stop to the plans to start deep-sea mining until the end of the government’s term,” said Kirsti Bergstø, the leader of the SV party.

In January, Norway became the first country in the world to give the go-ahead to commercial deep-sea mining, after parliamentary approval. The coalition government said that while the licences had been suspended preparatory work would still continue, including carrying out an environmental impact assessment and setting regulations.

“This will be a postponement,” the prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, from the Labour party, told the private broadcaster TV2 on Sunday.

Environmental groups described the news as a “historic win” for ocean protection.

Oslo had planned to let companies apply to mine 280,000 sq km (108,000 sq miles) of its waters, an area greater than the UK, for deep-sea minerals.

“After hard work from activists, environmentalists, scientists and fishermen, we have secured a historic win for ocean protection, as the opening process for deep-sea mining in Norway has been stopped,” said Haldis Tjeldflaat Helle, a deep-sea mining campaigner at Greenpeace Nordic.

Norway is being sued by one of the world’s largest environmental groups, WWF, over its move to open up the seabed for mining. WWF claims it has failed to properly investigate the consequences. The Norwegian Environment Agency, which advises the government, has also said the impact assessment does not provide a sufficient scientific or legal basis for deep-sea mining.

The plans have also met international opposition. In February, the European parliament expressed its concern over Norway’s decision, and called on member states to support a moratorium.

The government has said an official study showed that substantial accumulations of metals and minerals, ranging from copper to rare earth elements, had been found on its continental shelf. It argues such metals are needed for the green transition to fossil fuels.

A coalition of 32 countries, including the UK, Germany, France, Canada and Brazil, has called for a moratorium on deep-sea mining in international waters.

As meteorological autumn drew to a close at the end of last week, parts of the north-east of the US saw substantial snowfall thanks to a phenomenon known as “lake-effect snow”.

This occurs when cold air passes over relatively warm lake waters, causing the layer of air near to the surface to absorb heat and moisture. Warmer than the air above it, this layer of air then starts to rise, cooling and condensing into clouds that deposit snow on the windward side of the lakes in extremely localised bands.

Conditions in that region were ideal for producing lake-effect snow accumulations over the weekend. An area of low pressure over eastern Canada allowed cold Arctic air to sweep across the Great Lakes, leading to significant snowfall in five states downwind of lakes Ontario, Michigan and Erie.

Western New York state was hit particularly hard, with nearly 4ft (1.22m) of snow accumulating in just four days. In response to the heavy snowfall, New York and Pennsylvania declared states of emergency, enabling the deployment of National Guard troops to rescue drivers trapped in snow in post-Thanksgiving travel.

The Buffalo Bills American football team sought volunteers to clear snow in their home, Highmark Stadium in New York state, before a game on Sunday night.

Further snow is expected during the start of this week, with up to 6ft forecast to settle in upstate New York by Tuesday. Colder conditions are expected to spread farther south through the eastern US, with temperatures 10-15F below average forecast for central and eastern Gulf coast states as high pressure builds over the mid-Mississippi valley.

Snow has also caused disruption across South Korea, with the capital, Seoul, receiving its third heaviest snowfall on record. Last Wednesday more than 40cm (16in) fell, the heaviest November snowfall since records began a century ago.

There were 142 flights and 76 ferry routes cancelled or suspended as freezing temperatures continued into Thursday, and more than 1,000 schools were shut in Gyeonggi, South Korea’s most populous province, which borders Seoul.

Snowfall resulted in the deaths of at least five people, four of them due to structures collapsing and the fifth in a traffic accident. Temperatures have since risen, melting much of the snow by Sunday.

I often feel these days that I am going bonkers. Or that I am staying sane while the world goes bonkers around me, which amounts to the same thing. It is getting to the point where I will almost miss being disoriented if it ever stops.

There is no danger of that, however, for as long as Meet the Rees-Moggs exists. Yes, it is a reality show about the former Tory MP for North East Somerset, once described as “a haunted Victorian pencil”, Jacob Rees-Mogg, his wife, Helena, and their six children. “We had to try five times before we got one who looked like me,” says Helena, and she is right. Helena, I hazard a guess, is always right.

Do you know what I would do if I were a rich politician, had married an aristocratic heiress who was even richer, and had a lovely life split between a large house in London and a vast family pile for my massive family in Somerset? Not sign up to a reality show like an absolute berk, that’s what.

The why of it is a compelling question. On the one hand, a lust for fame does not jibe with what we know of poshos. On the other hand, anyone who puts together a persona as carefully as Jacob has over the years – and he is his own pastiche – is hardly someone not crying out for attention. Perhaps he thinks the show will do for him what appearing on Have I Got News for You did for Boris Johnson back in the day – make enough of the public fall for the act, and rise to power on that misbegotten popularity. If it works, we’ll deserve it.

Once the show begins, however, the why fades to a background hum as the Rees-Moggery begins. Contrary to expectations, Jacob seems overtly fond of and engaged with his children (three at home, three at boarding school). His daughter, Mary, says she often teaches him slang to amuse herself. “So,” we hear him ask her later at the dinner table, “‘wasteman’ is not rizz?” I’m not sure Helena gives any of her brood a thought if they are not in her eyeline, which I admire tremendously.

Helena quickly becomes the star of the show. The general election is announced. “The mood in the country,” she says, without moving her lips or jaw, “is anti-Conservative. Possibly with some justification, unfortunately.” It’s incredible. The words get out, but you cannot see how. The birthday of their fourth (I think) child, Anselm, falls on the day of Boris Johnson’s 60th birthday party, to which they are all going. Helena wonders if Anselm might want to do something in addition. Go-karting, he suggests. Helena computes this and agrees. Later, she preps the children for the likely outcome of the election. “Other careers are available.” Her wit is so dry it leaves you feeling sandpapered. I think she may become my new obsession.

The Rees-Moggs’ Catholicism is covered. “I’m very lucky to have my own chapel,” says Jacob, but there are plenty of truthful and non-risible remarks about the faith, too, plus an oddly endearing discussion with the children when one wonders whether transubstantiation isn’t a bit like, you know, cannibalism?

Their courtship is covered. She knew him as her friend Annunziata’s brother. He knew her as a descendant of one of his greatest political heroes, Thomas Wentworth. He told her all about him. “I staggered away after about 20 minutes,” says Helena (somehow, I still haven’t caught her in the act of enunciating). Before their first date, he tried to buy a book on Wentworth to give her, but it wasn’t in stock. So he bought her a pair of earrings instead – a move that suggests a degree of spontaneity in the Moggsian mind that is otherwise invisible. They both wanted lots of children, and that was that. Theirs is clearly a love match, though the L-word is never mentioned. His face lights up when she talks and especially when she teases him.

But the unexpectedly appealing scenes of their domestic life (yes, replete with staff and everything else you would have if you were sitting on a fortune, but also with children making jokes about poo, and Helena, to whom I have pledged allegiance by the end of episode two, delivering brutal apercus at every turn) contrast with interviews with people such as David Leverton. He is on the streets campaigning in the run-up to the election against Mogg and urging tactical voting to get him out. “Almost everything he stands for is bad,” he says, of the anti-abortion, pro-Brexit, anti-immigration MP. “He seems to despise people who are poorer [than he is] – which is almost all of us.” It is more than the Have I Got News for You team threw at Johnson. Whether it is enough to counteract the idiosyncratically charming picture painted elsewhere, we will have to wait and see.

Two spinal cords, a dozen ribs and a hollowed-out head lie next to a peak called “rock of the eagle” in Gaelic. These are the remains of a pair of three-month-old lambs. It’s muggy, and maggots and foxes will make light work of the remaining skin and bone. In a few weeks, it’ll be as if it never happened.

Ruaridh MacKay, who has been farming here at Stronmagachan Farm in Inveraray for 25 years, picks up one of the spinal cords: sodden and slimy from successive fronts of rain, every morsel of flesh has been excavated. He was expecting to take these lambs to market next month.

All around are miles of sheep-grazed hills, like a giant lawn spun inside a tumble dryer. The valley is bowl-shaped and gets steeper the higher it rises, finishing in sheer rock. The sheep that live up here are bred for these conditions – both farmer and sheep have long lineages. Farming on these hills has changed little in 150 years.

MacKay tosses the carcass, and drives a quad bike on to two more contortions of bones, which a few weeks ago were also large lambs. He says the mysterious deaths started about 12 years ago. In an average spring and summer, he expects to lose around 60 lambs to unexplained death: what farmers call “blackloss”. Last year, he lost more like 200. “The lambs out on the hill were decimated,” he says.

According to MacKay, the culprit was a sea eagle, an icon of the rewilding movement and a reintroduction success story. It is one of the world’s largest birds of prey. “Given the age that these lambs were, they shouldn’t have been killed by anything else,” he says.

MacKay, along with dozens of farmers in this region, is convinced that they are killing hundreds of lambs. “I’m 99% sure. I can’t be 100% – I can’t seem to get a photograph,” says MacKay. Conservationists remain adamant that sea eagles are innocent, and that the claims from farmers are inflated or fabricated.

In the absence of a smoking gun, competing narratives are coming to the fore – a microcosm of the conflicts over predator reintroductions that are playing out around the world. “I’m used to people thinking I’m lying,” says MacKay. “There is no definitive proof. It’s frustrating, but I’m used to it now.”

With hundreds of lambs dead, and the economics of the farm on the edge of survival, he says that just one thing could make this conflict better: “to be believed”.

The reintroduction

Sea eagles – also known as white-tailed eagles – are enormous, majestic birds. They have a wingspan of up to 2.5 metres and are the fourth largest eagle in the world. They were once so common in the UK that mountain tops and villages throughout the country are named after them.

For hundreds of years, however, landowners, gamekeepers, farmers and collectors killed them in large numbers. The last known wild bird in Britain died in 1918.

Then, with huge excitement, they were reintroduced to the west coast of Scotland 50 years ago. The early settlers were flown over from Norway and thrived. Now there are an estimated 150 breeding pairs in Scotland, with numbers increasing. Thousands of people love watching them soar over the island of Mull each year, bringing in millions to the local economy. It is against the law to harm or kill them.

At the time of reintroduction, conservationists said they posed no threat to livestock. The eagles are found across dozen of European countries, and have been reintroduced to the Isle of Wight and Ireland, with no substantial recorded issues relating to livestock attacks.

But farmers in Scotland have consistently said their lambs were being killed. In 1996, reports came through of rogue pairs killing lambs. In 1998, some estimates suggested up to 400 lambs were being lost in one season.

The Scottish government said the problem seemed to be “almost unique to Scotland”, and in 2015 launched its Sea Eagle Management Scheme in acknowledgment that it wasn’t just the odd farm being affected. More than 200 holdings have been accepted. Farmers can claim up to £5,000 through the scheme, which requires extensive documentation of losses, pest control and sheep health for approval.

The government emphasises that it is not “compensation” because it is rarely possible to prove that sea eagles were the killers.

The hard evidence seemed thin. There is no footage of an eagle attacking a live lamb. “The science, the evidence, the facts, just don’t support that at all,” says Dave Sexton, who was the RSPB’s officer on Mull until he retired recently.

Sexton helped establish the island as a sea eagle tourism destination and has been watching these birds almost every day for 21 years. He has never seen them attack a healthy lamb.

He believes “they could and probably do” take healthy lambs but disputes the scale claimed by farmers. “I hope that, in another 20, 30 years, people aren’t still having this argument about white-tailed eagles – that we have managed to find a way to live alongside these birds,” he says.

Environmental groups say eagles are being scapegoated – lambs die inexplicably all the time. A new apex predator is a more concrete culprit to blame than the vagaries of weather, foxes and fluctuating flock health. In a bid for evidence either way, a series of field studies was launched, including one involving 600 hours of people standing around looking for eagle predation. None saw any eagles taking livestock.

Many conservationists declared the case closed. One BirdLife report on the research concluded: “The white-tailed eagle is quite clearly not a threat to livestock.”

But the Scottish birds are teaching us new things about these apex predators. Ecologists say they could be a living example of how reintroduction of species to depleted ecosystems can have unpredictable results.

The bones

Sea eagles are said to feed mainly on fish, birds and mammals, and have large appetites, requiring up to 600g of food a day. They are adaptable generalists, consuming whatever is local – coastal birds eat more fish, inlanders consume more rabbits. And one thing is now unequivocal: they do eat lamb.

Once the eagles have left their nests and their young have fledged, ecologist and bird ringer Justin Grant abseils up to eagle nests and collects their leftovers – mainly bones and the odd feather – which he sorts into species. It’s a bit like going through someone’s household waste.

“Everything’s pretty much on the menu,” says Grant, but lamb is a recurring feature. “Some conservationists still think that all lamb in their diet is scavenged rather than killed – and much as I’d like that to be the case, I think it’s unlikely,” he says. “Any eagle that’s capable of killing red deer calves is clearly capable of killing small lambs.”

Grant’s forensic work resulted in a paper published at the end of 2023, analysing more than 11,000 bits of food found in sea eagle nests (the data does not tell us about juvenile birds, which do not have nests, or whether meat was scavenged). Overall, it found lamb accounted for just 6% of prey items in eagles’ nests. An RSPB press release trumpeted the research, saying it proved that lambs were “not a major food source for breeding white-tailed eagles”.

But the impacts were unevenly distributed. Some nests contained more than 30% lamb remains. Argyll had the most, with almost 20% of food in all nests across the region identified as lamb. On Mull and Lochaber, it was 14% and 13% respectively.