Habitat Loss in the Uplands - by David Jarrett

One of the most important lessons from forty years of science on UK wader declines is that scale matters a great deal: excellent management at a field or farm level is unlikely to make much difference when it occurs within an area where land use at a large scale is not conducive to productive wader populations. Equivalently, unsympathetic management at a small scale can be surprisingly irrelevant within a larger area where predator densities are restricted and habitat is suitable.

As such, the remaining strongholds for many wader species are around large areas of contiguous grouse moor management, where estates work together over a large landscape to reduce predator populations, both on moorland and on surrounding farmland. Of course, the small-scale matters too in these areas: in the Yorkshire Dales, where the British Trust for Ornithology have been working for many years, gamekeepers also work with farmers and silage operators to find individual nests or chicks to save them from the mower’s blade.

Nevertheless, it is the decreasing extent of contiguous, open habitat where predator populations are restricted that is driving declines of waders across the UK. A new report from the Heather Trust provides more information on large-scale patterns of land use change, using land cover data to assess the loss of moorland habitats from 1990 - 2023. The findings of the report are very relevant to breeding wader conservation but might only confirm what a well-travelled wader fieldworker will already know: those strongholds where we know that waders have remained relatively stable like the Yorkshire Dales have witnessed little afforestation. In contrast, Southern Scotland has experienced catastrophic wader declines, and the rate of forestry expansion and moorland habitat loss is amongst the highest of any UK region, with 19% of moorland lost between 1990 and 2023.

The full report will soon be available for download. It concludes by saying: “Land use policy needs to be cognisant of the value of maintaining large areas of contiguous, open moorland habitat together with management designed to support ground-nesting birds, as well as acknowledging the important benefits associated with the restoration of large-scale native woodlands.”

David Jarrett

Independent researcher (now with BTO Scotland)