A quarter of UK birds under threat as curlew joins red list

Europe’s largest and most distinctive wading bird, the curlew is among those that have been added to the “red list” of threatened UK birds in its most recent update, with numbers falling 64 per cent from 1970 to 2014.

The UK is home to a quarter of the global breeding population of curlews, which is known for its haunting calls on Yorkshire’s moors and estuaries. But numbers have almost halved in this country in recent decades due to habitat loss, the State of the UK’s Birds 2016 report said, and its once-resilient population is now being hit by predators.

With the species considered to be “near-threatened” globally, an international single species action plan has been created, with research in its uplands breeding grounds to find practical measures to help the bird.

A study is being carried in Geltsdale, Cumbria and the Peak District to test the combination of controlling predators like foxes and crows, as well as ensuring the birds have the rough, damp, vegetation they favour for nesting to stabilise numbers.

If it proves successful it could be rolled out in other key areas - including Nidderdale and the Yorkshire Dales.

Yorkshire has seen a 33 per cent decline since the mid 1990s.

Sarah Sanders, RSPB Curlew Recovery Programme Manager, said predator control was a “last resort option.”

She said: “Places like Yorkshire, where there is still a fairly large core population, are really important in terms of maintaining the population. If we are going to have any impact it will require working across vast landscapes with farmers and landowners - it is not something the RSPB can do on its own.”

She said predator control “is the last resort option - at the moment we are in a position where we have a globally threatened species which could potentially disappear.

“We have a global responsibility to do something about it because we are the third most important country in the world for breeding curlew.”

Puffins, nightingales, pied flycatchers and merlins are among other the species that have joined the list of those most in need of conservation action in recent years, bringing the total on the red list to 67.

The listing of Atlantic puffins as being in need of conservation action comes after they were classed as vulnerable to extinction globally, in the face of worryingly high breeding failures at key colonies in recent years.

But the State of the UK’s Birds report also points to good news for some species, with recent surveys showing an increase of 15 per cent in golden eagle numbers in Britain and a boost to rare cirl buntings a sparrow-sized bird found in South West England, which now have more than 1,000 breeding pairs.

The report comes from the RSPB, British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT), together with government conservation agencies across the UK.