Wading in on habitat loss

The battle to manage agricultural landscape for breeding waders is doomed to failure unless there is a change of policy at national level

- CRAIG MCCANN-MCMILLAN

Shooting Times has quite rightly given a good number of column inches to the plight of waders, but what has really gone wrong for these birds? Despite the dedication of a smattering of landowners, farmers and gamekeepers, breeding wader populations have collapsed in the lowlands due to habitat loss, changes to farming practices and a huge increase in predators.

What of the uplands, where many would think little has changed? How wrong could they be? The main driver for habitat change in the uplands is Defra and its ‘family’ member, Natural England. I’m afraid they do not emerge with much credit from my summing up of their track record.

From the days of the catastrophic headage payment, driven by the EU, to the current Entry Level Stewardship (ELS) and Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) schemes, they have lurched from one extreme to the other.

On the high side of the moorland wall, destocking and restrictions to heather management have already led to tree encroachment and loss of wader habitat to increasing vegetation height. Before we get too excited at the thought of more trees, these are not natives that will catch more carbon — quite the opposite. They are needle-covered foreign pines, Sitka and Norway spruce.