Waders and Woodland – by Ross McLeod
I’ve been supporting colleagues and other organisations recently to complete an agreed draft for a Curlew Species Action Plan. There is genuine relief to have got this collaborative work over the line and ready for deployment. It identifies the key challenges we know that we need to address, based on a long history of observation, practice and peer-reviewed research. The plan focuses on the need for protected area networks, wader recovery areas, well-designed land management schemes, and of course, effective predation control.
Implicit within the document, the impact of woodland and forestry expansion is acknowledged in terms of zonal plans to guide wader conservation, mapping to ensure the right trees are put in the right place and government publications on appropriate woodland creation. This tacitly recognises the critical importance in finding balance between our response to climate change and continuing biodiversity losses. In short, how do we reduce our emissions, sequester carbon at the same time as turning around the fortunes of much-loved species such as Curlew, Lapwing, Oystercatcher and other wading birds?
The significance of this challenge was made abundantly clear to me recently in working with a local farmers’ wader conservation group in the Scottish Borders. They are committed to productive and efficient agriculture but are also rightly proud of their efforts to conserve the significant wader assemblage over the area they manage. Their task has been made much harder by the possibility that some of the best breeding territory could be threatened by potential woodland grant applications. Whilst this may occur outside of the nesting ground the group looks after, the more insidious impact of ‘predator shadow’ created by the extension of woodland is of real concern. It both fragments and reduces breeding habitat, which particularly impacts on site-faithful Curlew. At the same time, an increased forestry or woodland footprint will increase the range of foxes, corvids and other protected predators, further amplifying all the pressures on ground-nesting waders.
As such, the farming group has made its concerns known to Scottish Government, Scottish Forestry, other stakeholders and to community organisations. To be clear, Scottish Forestry has recognised and actively engaged with these challenges over many years now. They have regularly participated in Working for Waders meetings and the development of appropriate planning, guidance and assessment is clear.
No-one is under the illusion about the need to confront the impact of climate change, but perhaps this local difficulty reminds us that there’s a constant, unremitting task to ensure the widest possible understanding about all the impacts affecting our cherished wading birds.
There’s a cairn at the top of Whaup Law in the Cloich hills, close to where I live in Peeblesshire. People across the Borders will recognise ‘Whaup’ as the local name for Curlew. Unfortunately, finding the cairn is quite a challenge as it’s now deep in mature Sitka woodland.
Ross Macleod
GWCT