Irish curlew population has crashed, Birdwatch Ireland warns

The Irish native curlew population has crashed, according to Birdwatch Ireland, and numbers are now possibly as low as the endangered corncrake.

The curlew, an iconic bird in Irish culture, celebrated in music and poetry because of its haunting cry, is suffering from loss of is nesting habitats, the advocacy group has warned.

Birdwatch Ireland now believes the collapse in the Irish curlew breeding population is comparable to the drastic drop in corncrake numbers, with just a few hundred curlew pairs believed to remain in the Republic and Northern Ireland.

The group is hoping to raise €99,000 for a comprehensive national breeding survey that is expected to begin in 2013, Anita Donaghy, Birdwatch Ireland’s curlew conservation project manager, said there could be as few as 200 breeding pairs of the wader in all of Ireland.

Surveys undertaken in the border counties, funded by the European Regional Development Fund and done in conjunction with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, indicated that there had been a catastrophic drop in native breeding numbers despite curlews still being a common sight because of over-wintering migration from other European countries .

“At the moment there are about 130 pairs of corncrakes in Ireland and the number of curlew pairs would not that much different from that,” Donaghy said. “We are saying 200 pairs in the republic of Ireland. There is a population of about 70 breeding pairs in Northern Ireland. What actually might be more realistic is that there are only 200 pairs in the whole of Ireland.”

There was a growing awareness that populations of breeding waders generally had declined. “We know from various surveys that we have been doing, for example, on the Shannon Callows in the Midlands, and from anecdotal surveys like the Countryside Bird Survey that the curlew are certainly scarce and have been declining,” she said. “The problem is that habitats have become more and more fragmented.”

Afforestation, intensification of land use, bog destruction and the abandonment of some lands to gorse and scrub are all believed to have contributed to habitat loss and predation is also believed to be a big factor in their demise. Curlews also remain on the hunting quarry list, meaning they can be legally shot during the shooting season in the republic. They have been removed from the quarry list in Northern Ireland.

Habitat loss has become a problem for the Eurasian Curlew in all of its breeding grounds. In 2009 the curlew was added to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. “Because of moderate declines across its range in Europe but also some indications of severe declines, particularly in Ireland, it was moved onto the global Red List. There are only two breeding bird species which are on that list: one is corncrake and the other is curlew. It now has a global significance,” said Donaghy.

She added that although there was no data to suggest an increase in wind farms had affected nesting sites, the loss of upland areas to such developments represented a reduction in potential nesting sites. The RSPB has stated that wind farms can harm birds through disturbance, habitat loss or damage, and collision.

Niall Hatch, Birdwatch Ireland’s development officer, said the curlew campaign was unprecedented in its size for gathering data on a single species.

The group was over a third of the way to its fundraising target, he said. The drive has been extended to the UK, but donations were also coming in from around the world. “It has been getting attention from other countries across Europe and in some places in the US,” he said.

The decline in numbers over 20 years had caught many people unawares. “It is certainly now one of Ireland’s rarest breeding species.”

Its loss as a breeding species in Ireland would be a tragedy from a national heritage viewpoint, given its long association with poetry and song.

“It has this amazing cry when it is flying around its nesting grounds. It is the sound of the wilderness, the sound of walking in the hills or walking through the fields at harvest time.

“It also points to the fact that something is going wrong in the environment. When you see declines in big breeding numbers, something is going wrong in the whole eco-system.”

He added that although they had different habitats, both the curlew and corncrake were affected by depletion of their nesting grounds. “Certainly they would both be icons of the Irish countryside that older generations would fondly remember.”