How grouse moors help our wading birds thrive

For these are the places to which tens of thousands of shorebirds – like golden plover, lapwings and curlews – move in the nesting season. The liquid piping of curlews is the most distinctive sound to be heard over Pennine moors through spring and summer.

And according to a new report the three species' breeding success is significantly improved by measures taken by gamekeepers to promote the interests of grouse.

These include the rotational burning of heather, so characteristic of many moors in Yorkshire, and the control of predators such as crows, stoats, rats and foxes.

A nine-year experiment at four moorland sites in the Otterburn area of Northumberland found that waders were more than three times as likely to raise a chick on an area with predator control measures than on an area without.

Numbers of ground-nesting lapwing, golden plover and curlew increased in years following predator control, but were seen to decline in other years.

The report concludes: "The concentration of moorland breeding waders in the North Pennines appears to be a direct result of grouse moor management."

Nationally, the British Trust for Ornithology's Breeding Bird Survey has shown that all three waders declined between 1995 and 2007. Curlews were the worst hit, suffering a 38 per cent reduction in numbers, with lapwings losing 14 per cent of their population and golden plover 8 per cent.

Upland birds had been the subject of several surveys, says the report, and many areas had shown significant drops in wader numbers.

Areas like North Wales and the Lake District seem to have been particularly affected. But the region that has bucked this trend has been the Pennines, from the River Tyne and Hexham in the north to the River Wharfe and Harrogate in the south.

It is no coincidence, the report suggests, that these uplands also held the greatest concentration of grouse moors.

In Yorkshire, one of the best illustrations of this finding is the 30,000-acre Bolton Abbey Estate in Wharfedale, where head gamekeeper Paul Wilby and his team of four keepers and an apprentice have seen significant increases in nesting waders on their grouse moors.

The estate attracts half a million visitors a year, and on a hot summer's day the car park beside the River Wharfe at Cavendish Pavilion fills with more than 1,200 vehicles. Yet on both sides – Barden Fell to the east of the river and Barden Moor to the west – thousands of wading birds manage to nest successfully.

This week, on a site visit organised by the report's publishers, the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT), landowners and conservationists saw first-hand evidence of how grouse moor management has directly improved waders' breeding chances at Bolton Abbey.

Benedict Heyes, the estate's agent, said that if he were applying harsh economic standards it would not make commercial sense to run a grouse moor, and it would be better to let someone else carry the costs by leasing out the moor.

"You've got to have deep pockets to manage grouse moors these days, and you don't do it for financial gain," he went on. "You do it for pleasure."

But the rewards for this policy can be heard all around the estate, with the large numbers of curlews and lapwings and smaller presence of golden plovers.

It requires a sustained effort by Paul Wilby and his keepers, who shoot or trap carrion crows, magpies and other birds which feed on eggs and chicks, as well as animal predators like stoats, weasels, rats and foxes.

The controlled burning of small patches of heather also help to maintain a patchwork of different heather heights, allowing a mixture of nesting and foraging habitats loved by waders that would otherwise not exist in many upland areas. The GWCT study concludes that these classic grouse moor management techniques were actually making more difference to the survival chances of waders in upland locations than were the financial incentives for so-called agri-environment schemes such as improving grass and moorland with fertilisers, control of bracken and over-grazing by sheep.

These techniques, said the study, were having more impact on the actual appearance of the landscape than they were on biodiversity.

It continues: "Agri-environment schemes on their own, without predator control, seem unable to give rise to an abundance of breeding waders or

even bring about a significant improvement in sparse populations."

Paul Wilby said of his vermin control: "We're not trying to wipe anything out, just simply control them to a level that is sustainable. Once the bird chicks are a good size and the breeding is almost over, we move onto other work and don't do so much control of carrion crows and the like. Autumn and winter is the time we look for stoats and weasels, but rats have to be controlled all year round."

Of course, some predators cannot be controlled. Small birds of prey like the merlin, which feed on young birds, are present and the moors are recognised as a nationally important site for the species. Peregrines, too, are now a common sight at Bolton Abbey but increases in wader numbers have occurred despite their presence.

Paul Wilby said: "For us, waders are a great way of monitoring the success of our grouse moor management work. What's good for grouse is good for waders."

Waders on the Fringe: Why nationally scarce waders flourish on grouse moors is published by the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust. A PDF of the report can be downloaded at www.gwct.org.uk