I wrote yesterday about our approach to predators and what we do when science shows that predation affects populations of threatened species. Today, I am delighted to host a guest blog from one of our great team of conservation scientists, Dr Jennifer Smart. Here, she reports on the results of research project designed to help the conservation of lapwings. The results have implications for conservation policy and practice. I would be delighted to hear your views.
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I am a bit of a wader fanatic and my favourite bird is a redshank. I am fortunate to work for the RSPBs Conservation Science department, and I live and work in the fantastic wetland landscape of the Norfolk Broads. BUT, I am increasingly saddened by the fact that many parts of the Broads no longer have breeding waders like lapwings and redshanks, a picture which is mirrored across wetlands in the UK. I am optimistic that things will improve, because we have been working hard to understand the pressures faced by these waders and what conservation solutions work.
What are the pressures faced by these waders?
Waders were once widespread and common. They declined because changes in wet grassland management meant they became less suitable for breeding. These days some species, like snipe, hardly ever breed outside nature reserves. As numbers have declined, they are more vulnerable to predation, especially as predator populations have also been increasing. Scientific evidence tells us that the populations of ground nesting species, such as lapwing and redshank, can be limited by high predation levels.
What are the conservation solutions?
Early on, there was much focus on how to manage grasslands for breeding waders. Lapwings like very short vegetation while redshanks need taller vegetation, so fields should have a mosaic of vegetation heights. Both species choose fields with wet features and the more wet features there are, the more lapwings and redshanks you get. Although this is simplistic, this is the fundamentals of wader management and because of this research, wet grassland restoration and recreation from arable land, particularly within nature reserves, has been very successful at increasing wader populations.
We also need more land managed for waders outside nature reserves. Fortunately, farmers can receive payments through agri-environment schemes, for sympathetic management, but does this approach work? New research published yesterday in Journal of Applied Ecology, asked whether habitat management funded through these schemes, improved conditions for lapwings breeding on grasslands in the uplands. The places where these lapwing breed, was in better condition where land was being managed through agri-environment schemes, and the number of young lapwings fledged was also higher. Unfortunately, the numbers of breeding lapwings were still declining because these improvements were not sufficient to halt the declines. It is very likely that not enough lapwings benefited from the improved conditions to effect the whole population and, given evidence from other upland research, that breeding success was also being reduced by predation.
We are also working on the problem of predation. Where foxes and badgers have been excluded using electric fences, lapwings fledge many more young than unprotected pairs. On reserves where predators such as crows and foxes are at high densities, controlling these predators produces more young lapwings. Some very recent research on RSPB reserves has found some promising habitat management techniques that reduce the number of wader nests that are taken by predators, but you will have to watch this space, as new work funded by Defra, is underway to test whether this also applies to waders breeding on land outside reserves.
What does this all mean for the future of wader conservation?
Our future vision is of landscapes where breeding waders are once again widespread and common. RSPB recently hosted a workshop to discuss how to achieve this and some key things emerged from those discussions. Time and money for conservation is always limited and this means we need to identify landscapes where there are still breeding waders and opportunities to improve management around and between those places. At the heart of these targeted landscapes, nature reserves should act as a source of birds with best practise habitat and predator management in place. We recognise that this will take time and we are already working in many of those landscapes but by continuing to use our reserves to trial novel methods and co-operating with other land managers to deliver great wader management, I am confident that there is a future for breeding waders in the British countryside.
I've just received this from Jen, who's been having trouble posting a comment: "I could not agree more with petercrispins comments, there is a wader assemblage of international importance in the uplands which has been in decline for some time, as has the Norfolk Broads waders. We are not ignoring the plight of waders and other birds in the uplands, in fact the new research we published this week was a long-term study of lapwings across large parts of the uplands in northern England, Wales and Northern Ireland. We have already done a lot of work to understand the cause of declines in upland birds such as curlew, twite and ring ouzel. Of course, there is always more to do and never enough resources to do everything, but over the next few months we will be setting the agenda for upland bird research and I hope this includes testing the value of some of the likely conservation solutions for birds in the uplands."
A micro - landscape example is a field in Skipwith N Yorks. Curlews nested there for years (my mother in law commented on them when she moved to live there from the home counties 27 years ago). When ponies were introduced the curlews left and probably won't come back until the nest is not in danger of being stamped on. There has been a massive increase of horse and pony ownership in the last 30 years and this could be just one more squeeze on land use affecting ground nesting bird decline.
This is all very well and good but it so very east coast/Sandy centric; a major political problem and a clear unconscious emotional and dare I say big farm even "class" bias for RSPB. Why an earth else have the large farm and particularly the arable recipients of CAP who are also driving land concentration not taking a pounding ? The landed 1%. The 2100 receiving over 100 grand in direct state subsidy ; each of them should be engraved in news and cyberspace print by now when all other wildlife budgets are cut?
Can I remind that there is an assemblage of international importance with regard to these waders in the west and north and the uplands. the declines here were identified in the early 1990's and are linked, in my view, not particularly to fox but to corvid predation and the huge increases in carrion crow and raven probably linked to increases in winter carrion. For example while out conducting my own surveys for Merlin (another upland species also long overdue some serious attention and in serious trouble) I have seen flocks of near 1000 of mixed corvids searching across entire hillsides for beetles; any wader chicks will obviously be hoovered up. Focus please.
I know the Broads are very important but I was unaware that they were part of an assemblage of international importance and our denuded uplands are long overdue a new vision that does not involve so many sheep. I suspect that here the Redshank, lapwing, Curlew that I remember in so many corners will not return, the Golden Plover and Snipe are I believe just hanging in. Please can we have also some focus on our lost areas of international responsibility.