While I've been locked in meetings over the past couple of days, two bits of big news have emerged about the state of UK birds and the future state of Defra finances.
Alas, both trends remain on a downward trajectory.
In this and my next blog, I shall try to get beyond the headlines and explore the implications.
I start with our core interest - what's happening to our birds.
The State of the UK’s Birds report (SUKB) was published today and the headline index is shown below.
I won't say much about the farmland bird line as I covered this yesterday. Instead, I thought I'd do something different and hightlight some good news stories.
Today's report showcases a range of these inspiring examples of organisations joining forces, from within and outside the conservation sector, aiming to improve the status of birds in the UK and UK Overseas Territories. These include the usual suspects; national statutory bodies and conservation NGOs, but also private landowners, farmers, supermarkets, the aggregates industry and even the brewing industry working together to deliver exciting and innovative projects.
Breeding wetland birds are one group to have benefited from partnership projects, particularly at a landscape scale; redshank, lapwing, bitterns and curlew are all responding to habitat restoration and management in Greater Thames, Somerset and Northern Ireland. Meanwhile in upland areas black grouse populations have increased on sites in North Wales, Geltsdale and Scotland as a result habitat management and partnerships between game managers and conservationists.
The State of the UK’s Birds report also covers the UK’s Overseas Territories. New Important Bird Areas have been identified on Ascension Island and St Helena through a project between local government and conservation NGOs. Recognition of the importance of these sites will benefit populations of the endemic Ascension frigatebird and the Critically Endangered St Helena Plover. There is also news of a new collaboration to address serious declines in northern rockhopper penguins on Tristan de Cunha islands which are home to more than 80% of the global population of this species.
The report rightly highlights the role that the volunteering community plays a huge part in all of the partnership projects: a recent JNCC report is quoted as having conservatively valued volunteer contributions of time to be worth in excess of £8.6 million per annum. Yet, this volunteering effort is only made possible by the investment in volunteer support provided by the state and NGOs. Which is why, sustained investment is required in supporting long term monitoring.
And, if we want to build on these excellent partnership projects then we must of course thinking creatively about new approaches to conservation. But we must also be looking to protect and grow existing investment. I see little chance of reversing the declines without the State continuing to play a role which is why it cannot be right for Defra to incur another round of cuts of up to 30%.
Tomorrow, I shall explain the implications of these cuts.
The links to Greater Thames etc don't work.