"Eddie" the Glengarriff eagle has been found dead on the Dingle Peninsula.
The white-tailed sea eagle whose parents were introduced as fledglings from Norway in 2007 was born in Glengarriff in 2016 and became the first wild sea eagle to fledge in Co Cork in over 100 years.
After leaving his nest site on Garnish Island in late 2016 he was sighted at several locations on the north side of the Beara, which runs into Kerry during his first winter.
Since spring of 2017 there had been sightings of him on the nearby Iveragh Peninsula in Kerry and afterwards he had remained around Dingle Bay and the Blasket as well as Tralee and Brandon Bay.
He had not been seen since June.
The last sighting of him had been at Fermoyle Beach not far from where his remains were discovered by a forestry worker in a Coillte plantation near Clochán (Cloghane) in the west Kerry Gaeltacht.
Eddie’s movements were tracked by the public and the reports and photographs were "invaluable" as he was not tracked by satellite tagging, unlike several other of the white-tailed eagles, Conservation Ranger Clare Heardman said on Facebook.
It was not possible to say what caused his death.
Dr Allan Mee, who has managed the largely successful reintroduction project, said that while it is possible Eddie died of natural causes, such as starvation, most such natural eagle mortality occurred in the first year of life.
The likelihood reduced the older the birds got .
"However, human related mortality, for example poisoning, can equally impact all age classes," Dr Mee said.
A number of the eagles in the programme managed by the Golden Eagle Trust and the National Parks and Wildlife Service, which have ranged as far as Scotland and northern Ireland from their base in Killarney, have been killed.
Around 13 have been poisoned.
