Following hot on the heels of the BioDiversity (BAP) update – there’s more news about a new project aimed at halting the decline in the number of lapwings on British farmland from the RSPB. The charity has chosen more than 250 farm sites in the UK to test measures designed to protect the lapwing, a once-common farmland bird whose numbers have declined by almost half between 1970 and 2004.
At present there are estimated to be around 156,000 breeding pairs in the UK and the bird is classified as amber on the British Trust for Ornithology’s Birds of Conservation Concern list. The RSPB membership study will compare farms where land is managed to attracts lapwings with similar sites that do not follow practices designed to attract the birds, over a five-year period. Farms in the Peak District in Derbyshire, the Forest of Bowland in Lancashire, the north Pennines, south-eastern Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are taking part.
The findings will be used to improve government schemes that pay farmers for environmentally friendly practices. Mark Bolton, a research biologist at the RSPB, said the project was aiming to find whether the UK’s agri-environment schemes would increase lapwing numbers or whether extra measures would be needed to ensure the right habitat was created.
“Lapwings are primarily farmland birds and only a fraction of the UK’s lapwing population breed on nature reserves,” he said. “That means the work of farmers is crucial, as is ensuring that improvements to farmland do not affect farm income. Finding ways of enabling farmers to manage habitats better is a key part of the project.” Flukeworm One farmer who will be taking part in the project is Simon Stott of Laund Farm in south Bowland, who has successfully introduced measures to encourage the birds to breed on his land. He had 16 pairs of lapwings nesting on his 500-acre farm this year, compared to just five pairs in 2003. He said: “The lapwings eat the flukeworm, which would otherwise cause disease in my sheep. “Other farmers have rough land, which is ideal for the lapwing. They want to do something with it but don’t realise they can be paid for helping wildlife.” Local RSPB officer, Gavin Thomas, said Mr Stott has shown that it was possible to carry out conservation work and farm economically.
“Because of farmers like Simon, we have a reasonable lapwing population in Bowland. “But they are declining, so we need to safeguard the birds we have and increase their numbers in the hope that they will spread. The recovery project should reveal just how we can do that.” Lapwing numbers have been decreasing in Britain since the middle of the 19th century, when the birds’ eggs were commonly collected for food. Their numbers recovered when this practice was banned, but a sharp decline since the 1940s has been driven by large-scale changes to farming in the UK. Lapwings have lost a huge amount of their habitat as wetland has been drained to make way for farming or housing development.
Their food source has been greatly reduced through the use of pesticides and fertiliser to produce better quality crops. Among the measures being tested by the RSPB are the “rewetting” of individual fields, maintaining areas of rough grassland and creating shallow ditches and small scrapes.
