Good news for breeding waders

It's our AGM tomorrow and to mark the occasion I wanted to share some good news.

Last month, I hinted that breeding waders on our nature reserves might have had a better season.  The results from across our network of nature reserves are now in and I am delighted to be able to report that some species - especially lapwing and black-tailed godwit - have had a good year.  Other species - like snipe and redshank - fared about as well as last year.

What this tells me is that the effort we have put in to getting the habitat right and taking appropriate action to control predators (either through fencing and lethal control) is paying off but there is still a lot of hard graft to ensure a sustainable future for these species*.

The volatility of our weather is not making management for waders any easier, but the dedication and expertise of our reserve teams, ecologists, advisors and scientists is making a huge difference to these species on our sites.  Yet, with climate change expected to increase the frequency of extreme weather events, we need to do even more to recover populations so they are able to deal with shocks.  

As one of our scientists, Dr Jennifer Smart, explained earlier in the year, our vision is for waders to be common in our landscapes in the future.  This simple ambition is a theme I shall be exploring further in my AGM talk on Saturday.  For those of you that are planning to come, I look forward to seeing you there. For those of you that are not, why not?  Either way, I shall offer some reflections about the AGM on Monday.

Below provides a snapshot of this year's UK the breeding wader story.  I hope this brings autumnal cheer...

England

In the fens and in the south-east, there is good news to report.  At the Nene Washes, for example, following disastrous flooding last summer, 35 black-tailed godwits fledged.  At the Ouse Washes, over 100 pairs of lapwing, redshank and snipe nested on wet grassland.

In Kent and Essex there was a similar story. At our North Kent reserves there were 88 pairs of lapwings -  the highest for 7 years - and at Rainham Marshes there were 27 pairs – the highest for 5 years. On these reserves there was the highest productivity (number of chicks fledged per pair) ever recorded.  There is general consensus that we should be aiming to get above the magic productivity figure of 0.7 regarded as being required to maintain a stable population.  5 out of our 6 Kent reserves exceeded this target.

Northern Ireland

Here we are beginning to see the impact of the Halting Environmental Loss Project (HELP) which was launched in March 2011.  The numbers of pairs of curlew, lapwing, redshank and snipe on the HELP project area (Loughs Erne, Foyle, and Beg areas and in the Glenwherry hills in Northern Ireland) have gone up each year since 2011. The total number of pairs of these birds was 405 in 2011 and in 2013 was an amazing 644. 

Wales

While results on our reserves are good, elsehwere, especially in the uplands, the future of breeding waders looks less rosy.  Collectively RSPB reserves are home to almost 20% of the Welsh breeding population of lapwings with Ynys Hir on the Dyfi Estuary in mid Wales, Anglesey wetlands, Conwy and as far south as Ramsey Island all supporting breeding pairs. The safe breeding habitat provided has seen good productivity with an average of 1.01 (on those sites assessed),  Working with landowners and partners on Mynydd Hiraethog, breeding curlews have also benefitted. 

Scotland

This year we are able to celebrate the fantastic contribution of our Inner Hebridean island reserves to wader successes. There were over 200 pairs of lapwing and over 100 pairs of redshank at Loch Gruinart on Islay contributing to over 500 pairs of waders of 8 species on this one reserve. 80 pairs of lapwing on Oronsay, over 300 pairs of lapwing alone on The Reef, Tiree plus another 400-odd pairs of 5 other species. On the farmland areas of our Coll Reserve, we have another 140 pairs of waders including lapwing, redshank and snipe. Just these four reserves contribute around 1600 pairs of waders to our reserve totals!

*As regular readers of this blog will remember, evidence has shown that predators can cause a problem for some ground-nesting birds. When we have evidence of a problem, that the predator is in a healthy conservation status, that action is likely to be effective we will undertake predator control but only adopt lethal means as a last resort.