THE Great Bustard, hunted to extinction in Britain in Victorian times, could next year be seen in the skies of southern England for first time since the 1830s.

Plans to reintroduce Europe's biggest landbird adults can weigh up to 20kg have been hatched by a group of scientific and wildlife experts.

This autumn they will seek the necessary government licence from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

If granted, the experts from the Great Bustard Steering Group intend to bring over young chicks from the Russian steppes next spring and release them over Salisbury Plain once they are strong enough to fend for themselves in the wild.

They hope to bring over about 20 chicks a year for the next five to ten years to build up the population.

Dr Patrick Osborne, of Stirling University's department of environmental science, scientific adviser to the steering group, said: "The Great Bustard is the only bird that used to breed in Britain 200 years ago and doesn't do so now, apart from the great auk.

"Everything else that has been lost has come back, except the Great Bustard, and it is the last great challenge to conservationists to put back what we had 200 years ago."

After becoming extinct in Britain in 1832, wild populations of the Great Bustard have concentrated on the flatlands of eastern Europe and it is the national bird of Hungary.