To continue the marine theme this week I've asked my colleague Rory Crawford to provide an update on seaduck conservation.
Image courtesy of Julius Morkūnas.
There are many things that famously herald the arrival of autumn: golden leaves, shortening days, cooler mornings, the explosion of fungi, the departure of swallows, the arrival of honking geese overhead, and the arrival of our marvellous wintering seaducks. OK, so perhaps the last of these isn’t famous at all - but maybe I can convince you that it should be!
As the name suggests, seaducks spend a lot of their time at sea - though most breed inland, next to freshwater bodies, they spend the rest of their time in saltier water. Only two species - the common scoter and the more familiar eider - breed in the UK. ‘Common’ scoter is perhaps a misnomer for a bird whose breeding numbers have declined drastically in the UK over the last 30-40 years, something that the RSPB and our partner organisations such as WWT are trying to understand.
Every autumn, the seaduck population around the UK swells to around 200,000, with birds from Arctic and sub-Arctic regions arriving to winter in our waters. As well as the common scoter, there is the striking velvet scoter, the greater scaup and the truly beautiful long-tailed duck, with its elegant plumage. Owing to their marine habits during our colder months, these birds are perhaps not familiar to everyone - particularly as the largest numbers tend to be further offshore, far from the gaze of coastal dog walkers and even hardened birdwatchers with powerful scopes - a great shame, given their obvious beauty and impressive feats of migration.
Perhaps it is not too surprising, therefore, that we know remarkably little about these birds - exactly where do UK wintering birds breed? What threats do they face? Perhaps more fundamentally, how many are there? Even such basic questions need exploring. By way of example, ecological surveys of offshore areas for windfarms in Liverpool Bay over a decade ago found a hitherto undiscovered aggregation of up to 79,000 birds!
However, with limited conservation resources, why should we be interested in what is happening with this obscure group of birds? Well, although there is much to be done to better understand seaducks, the emerging conservation picture is alarming. Four of the five wintering species are now ‘Red’ listed on the most recent UK Birds of Conservation Concern owing to recent declines. Two of those - long-tailed duck and velvet scoter - are on the IUCN Red List, listed as ‘Vulnerable’. In places where seaducks are better studied - such as the Baltic Sea - declines of 50% or more have been recorded for several seaduck species in recent years. As bellwethers of both the marine and terrestrial environments, these ducks are experiencing the worst of both worlds. On land, habitat loss or degradation and predation are thought to be impacting breeding birds; at sea, they are at risk from bycatch in gillnet fisheries (particularly in the Baltic Sea) and oil spills.
Unfortunately, investment in understanding these trends and the threats driving them appears to be decreasing in the UK, not increasing. Last winter, there was a cross-Baltic/North Sea seaduck census organised to build our understanding of trends in the European wintering seaduck population. Sadly, the UK decided not to participate. With no plans for offshore census in British waters, we have to rely on land-based counts, which are grossly inadequate for counting these birds, as the Liverpool Bay case highlights.
There are some rays of hope – as Martin highlighted earlier this week, the Government is in the process of designating the third tranche of Marine Conservation Zones in England to implement their manifesto commitment of creating a well connected and managed network of protected areas. We’ve been working to include seabirds at sea in this protection and you can find out how to help here.
In addition, the Scottish Government has proposed 10 new marine Special Protection Areas - seven of which host wintering seaducks, including the Moray Firth which attracts the largest British wintering populations of long-tailed duck and velvet scoter.
A further four sites are currently being consulted on during the remainder of the year. This represents a huge leap forward for at-sea protection of our marine birds, but of course, lines on maps have to be matched with appropriate site protection through management measures, monitoring and enforcement.
In short, there needs to be investment in the statutory nature conservation bodies that carry out this work - and at present, they are desperately under-resourced. Seaducks may not be familiar to many, but we host internationally important populations of these remarkable birds and as a result have an international responsibility to look after them. Understanding what is happening to the populations that share our shores in the winter is the least we should be expected to do - and a strong protected area network helps to steer development away from sensitive areas, preventing regulatory blight (as we’ve talked about before here).
At a time when our marine environment is set to get busier than ever, we need to better understand the plight of our beautiful seaducks before it’s too late. While the long-tailed duck and the puffin don’t share the same status in the public eye, they do share the dubious honour of ‘Vulnerable’ conservation status. For the sake of all of our seabirds - from the less familiar seaducks to the better-known characters like puffins - it’s time to seriously invest in monitoring and protection to stop the slide towards extinction.