We received a petition asking:
“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to publicly acknowledge the plight of the wader and accept the role of predator control and a fair balance of species in reversing the decline in numbers.”
Details of Petition:
“Save the Wader campaigns to protect a vulnerable species of bird whose numbers are in sharp decline. Wading birds are part of our national heritage; quietly iconic, the call of a curlew is spine tingling – but this is an increasingly rare sound as waders of all types are in danger of disappearing throughout much of the country. We believe that it is about time something was done to stop this happening; reversing the decline of once common and widespread species must remain a key challenge in bird conservation.”
· Read the petition
· Petitions homepage
Read the Government’s response
Thank you for your e-petition.
There is no doubt that the breeding populations of many waders have declined. The stone curlew and black tailed godwit for example, are red listed birds of conservation concern and are also on the UK list of Priority Species because of declines in their populations.
There is overwhelming evidence that the main factors responsible for declines in breeding waders are habitat loss and the intensification of farmland management. In the past, the drainage of wetlands and conversion to arable farming was a major factor, as it reduced the amount of breeding habitat available. More recently the intensification of grassland management, overgrazing and problems with water-level management have reduced the quality of available habitat.
It is true that in degraded habitats, nests may be vulnerable to predation (particularly by corvids – the crow family - and ground predators such as foxes and mink) because they are more easily detected. However, there is no supporting evidence that predation is the primary factor driving the population declines. In order to restore wader populations, protection and enhancement of breeding habitats is critical and Defra’s agri-environment schemes, currently administered by Natural England, specifically target funding for the management, restoration and creation of these important habitats. Agri-environment schemes and additional measures are employed on nature reserves important for breeding waders managed by Natural England, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and other organisations. There are also targeted conservation programmes for rare species, mostly funded through agri-environment schemes, which have succeeded in increasing populations of species such as the stone-curlew.
In the short term, lawful control of generalist predators can play a role in the conservation of rare breeding waders but this should not distract attention away from the fact that habitat restoration is the key factor.
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