Related
Recommended
Vanessa Amaral-Rogers

As we celebrate World Curlew Day today, Sarah Sanders, Project Manager for the RSPB’s Curlew Recovery Programme looks back at the efforts made over the past 12 months and what we need to do in the future to help save this threatened wading bird.

The urgency of the situation

The Species Action Plan meeting for curlew in Ireland was held last September. With only around 250 breeding pairs in the Northern Ireland and 138 pairs in the Republic of Ireland, it was a sobering reminder that we are facing the real possibility of extinction in the next ten years. It brought home the urgent need for action now to hang on to the few pairs that are left so it’s very encouraging to see groups like the Glenwherry Curlew Initiative forming and the Curlew Conservation Task Force in Ireland working hard to deliver for the species.

(c) Tim Melling

The scale of the task ahead

We are in the final year of the curlew trial management project so I had the privilege of spending a day recently with Irena Tomankova, the conservation scientist managing the research and a couple of the assistants recruited to undertake the annual monitoring. I reckon they have one of the hardest jobs at the RSPB as from March until September they collect a vast range of data across both the trial and control sites, which are each around 10km². This is used to assess whether our habitat management and predator control interventions are having an impact on both curlew numbers and nesting success. By the end of the season they will have probably walked over 1000km over some very tough terrain. This is about the equivalent of walking a straight line from Land’s End to John O’Groats.

The RSPB is doing what it can for curlew at its own sites

During the 2018 breeding season, the reserves ecology team audited 25 priority RSPB reserves for curlew. The main findings were that curlew populations are increasing or stable on 70% of the key sites. Overall, habitat was in good condition across the reserves network with 79% scoring good or ideal. Clear management actions to maintain or enhance populations of curlew at all sites were identified and will be reviewed annually so that we can measure the progress we are making towards curlew conservation at our top sites.

Curlews feeding in mud (c) Tim Melling

The need for Governments across the four countries to respond now

Although we still have one breeding season to go, we can already see that making a difference for curlew across the wider countryside is hugely challenging and is going to require additional funding. They are a widely dispersed species, that are very sensitive to disturbance and not easy to monitor. Their rapid decline is driven by changes in the way land is used at the landscape scale. We need to see action from the governments across the four countries to ensure the right land management policies are in place to meet their international responsibilities under the African Eurasian Waterbird Agreement including:

  • Adequate funding for, and effective delivery of, agri-environment schemes. Agri-environment schemes are a key way to support nature-friendly farming and benefit species such as curlew. These schemes must be central to future farming policy and must be adequately funded to meet the scale of conservation need. This means ensuring schemes are well designed and targeted to deliver for threatened birds such as curlew and ensuring enough support is available to farmers to work together in clusters to make a positive difference for curlews across landscapes.

  • Forests are in the right place. All the countries have ambitious climate change emission reduction targets and view tree planting as playing a key role in storing carbon. We are asking governments to undertake spatial mapping assessments, consider woodland expansion targets alongside conservation and other land use priorities in an integrated way to guide future planting decisions and ensure sensitive areas for curlews are avoided.

  • Important breeding sites are protected. Protected areas help to safeguard key breeding sites from inappropriate development and damaging land use. We are concerned that the UK currently has no Special Protection Areas (SPAs) for breeding curlew, which are protected by EU law and afford the highest level of protection. A UK review in 2017 concluded that coverage was insufficient for the species so we would like to see the recommendations published and progressed, including surveys to verify and to protect potentially important hotspots for curlews.

  • Predator-free landscapes. Whilst we must deal with the immediate problem of high predator numbers, further research is urgently needed to understand why predation rates are unsustainably high in curlew landscapes and how we can reduce them. 

Meeting of the Curlew International Species Action Plan Group

The ‘Curlew Community’ gives me hope

Over the past week we have heard from various inspiring groups and individuals, across the UK, including Mary Colwell, our curlew champion, all united by the aim to help curlew. From the UK and Ireland Curlew Action Group, to the Northern Upland Chain Local Nature Partnership in Northern England, to Working for Waders in Scotland and Gylfinir Cymru in Wales, World Curlew Day is a reminder that we can come together to make a difference for this remarkable but very threatened species.