Guest blog, James Pearce-Higgins: managing for species in the face of climate change

The fourth blog in our series comes from the British Trust for Ornithology's Science Director, James Pearce-Higgins. You can read far more on any of the topics in this mini-series on our new report on the impacts of climate change on wildlife, released one week ago.

Managing species in the face of climate change

In the UK, our peatlands are one of the environments most threatened by climate change. Active peatland depends upon a high water table to encourage the growth of Sphagnum mosses, and other vegetation, which through time, decompose and are slowly converted into peat, locking away the carbon they contain. In most upland areas, these peatlands are rain-fed, and therefore they tend to be most strongly associated with western and northern Britain.

This means that the extensive areas of blanket peatland in the UK are not only vital to protect in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but that they will be vulnerable to changes in precipitation and increases in temperature caused by climate change, which can reduce water tables. The species which occur on them may also threatened by climate change in the same way. For example, the golden plover, like a number of other bird species, associates strongly with blanket peatland areas, where a flush of invertebrates in spring provides abundant food for its young. The most important of these are craneflies, whose larvae are vulnerable to desiccation when the peat dries-up in hot summer weather, providing a strong link between soil moisture, insect abundance and golden plover abundance. As a result, the golden plover population in the Peak District may be vulnerable to extinction under a high climate change scenario by the end of this century.

We are not without tools to combat this threat. Through appropriate management, it may be possible to counteract the impacts of climate change. Much of our peatlands are in poor condition as a result of historical drainage and erosion. By blocking these drainage channels, we can raise water tables, improving the condition of the vegetation, and increasing cranefly abundance by up to five times, increasing the resilience of populations of peatland birds, such as the golden plover, to climate change.

Alternatively, management may be able to compensate for the impacts of climate change by improving a species’ population status without directly addressing the climate-related mechanism causing decline. In the example of golden plovers, which can be susceptible to its eggs and young being predated by generalist predators such as corvids and foxes, this could be through management to reduce predation.

Although in the face of climate change, the long-term persistence of many of our upland birds may seem unlikely, it appears there is much that conservationists can do to slow or prevent such declines occurring. Recent evidence that populations of northern species threatened by climate change have persisted longer in protected areas likely to be managed favourably for them, than in the wider countryside, supports this. Looking to the future, our ability to replicate this model elsewhere will depend upon understanding the mechanisms driving each population’s response to climate change, and maintaining the resources to support such active intervention.