So as the rain beats against the window it’s difficult to believe that England has an officially recognised semi-arid region. The Brecks is a distinctive landscape of big skies and sandy soils with a climate that has shaped a home for a special and characteristic range of wildlife.
The Brecks is the most important place in the country for stone curlews (pictured) and, along with Salisbury Plain, is where partnerships between farmers, landowners and conservationists have brought stone curlews back from the brink. Colleagues here at the RSPB have been working in the Brecks for over 25 years to ensure there is a future for stonies.
So the results for the Brecks population this year are a bit worrying – although the number of pairs we located was about the same as last year (actually two fewer) the number of young produced was low.
This is disappointing as in many other ways stone curlews in the Brecks have had a good run recently. First, the outcome into plans for dualling the A11 firmly took account of the need to create additional habitat for them and then the local authorities across Brecks have been doing a great job in protecting the habitat for stone curlews through policies included in the Local Development Frameworks.
Sound policies based on the best science available are crucial in ensuring our most important wildlife sites are effectively protected ... as planning in England is undergoing something of a revolution at the moment this is bound to be a topic we return to over the coming months.
But back to the stonies – hopefully this year is a blip in a long-running successful conservation programme but it serves as a reminder that although their numbers are recovering we can’t be complacent. The hard-one recovery to around 370 pairs across England is great news (there used to be over 1000 before numbers slumped to 150 – 160 in the mid 80s) but as Tim Cowen our Breckland stone curlew project officer, says – ‘We can’t rest on our laurels’.
Effective protection of the habitat through the planning system coupled with the partnerships our recovery team have forged with farmers and land-owners give us confidence that the future for the goggle-eyed plover, (a local name for the stone curlew) is positive.
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