Red kites have managed to avoid extinction in mid Wales

Thirty kite chicks taken from the county's forests have been released in the mountains of County Wicklow.

It is the first stage of a four-year programme to bring back a bird persecuted to extinction in Ireland.

Their progress will be tracked by tiny radio transmitters attached to their distinctive fork tails.

The Irish government hopes the kites will prove as popular a tourist attraction in Ireland as they have been in Wales for the past decade.

Ireland's Environment Minister John Gormley said: "In Ireland we're starting off, but we depended very much on our Welsh colleagues, and we see that in Wales it's an enormous tourist attraction.

In Ireland we're starting off, but we depended very much on our Welsh colleagues John Gormley, Ireland Environment Minister

"I think we'll see the same success here in Ireland."

It has taken two years to get the re-stocking programme off the ground, but in mid Wales the red kite project has proved so successful that it is hoped they will settle and breed in Ireland too.

After two weeks in special secure nests they will be given their freedom and will return to the skies above the emerald isle.

The Welsh Kite Trust liaised with the Golden Eagle Trust in Ireland on the project.

Damien Clarke, of the Golden Eagle Trust, said the kites from Wales would have been the closest relative to the birds driven to extinction there decades ago.

In the UK, the once-widespread bird of prey was persecuted to near extinction in England and Scotland by 1879. A small number of kites managed to hang on in the remote uplands of mid Wales.

During the past 15 years a project to re-introduce kites throughout the UK has proved successful.