Our birds are lucky in one very important respect – they are very well counted and monitored by a small army of volunteers. Our efforts (I contribute records through BirdTrack) are the foundations of conservation in the UK.
The annual report ‘The State of UK’s Birds 2012’ has just been published. It’s a collaborative effort between the RSPB, BTO, The Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, BirdLife International, Countryside Council for Wales, Natural England, Northern Ireland Environment Agency and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee.
A brightly coloured logo-park adorns the cover loomed over by a rather fierce looking southern rockhopper penguin (you can get a download here; there’s a link on the right hand side of the page).
Hang on – a penguin?
We don’t have penguins in the UK ...
The report also includes the UK’s Overseas Territories which hold some the world’s most vulnerable birds (including those penguins) – facing threats from fisheries by-catch, oil spills, airport expansion and volcanic eruptions.
The partnership behind State of UK Birds enjoyed a day in the media sun – focussing on the startling figure that we have lost 44m breeding birds since 1966 – here’s an example from the Guardian.
The report covers a lot more and is well worth a read – it’s very accessible despite its roots in the sharp end of conservation science.
This blog has a focus on special places – the sites that are of most importance to birds and wildlife (though I admit to occasional drifts off topic) and there is an important series of articles (starting on page 22) reviewing the crucial role the UK’s wetlands play in the conservation of migrating wildfowl and waders.
At headline level the numbers are impressive, but closer analysis is revealing changes in the distribution of the vast flocks of waterfowl, numbers are slipping on west coast estuaries, but holding up on the east coast – the reasons for that are not entirely clear. What is certain, the contribution of the largely volunteer-collected counts in future years will help to work out the answers.
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