Birds of conservation concern - report published
The latest assessment of the status of all of the UK's 246 regularly occurring birds - Birds of Conservation Concern 3 - shows 52 are now of the highest conservation concern and have been placed on the assessment's red list. The revised red list now includes even more familiar countryside birds, including the cuckoo, lapwing and yellow wagtail, joining other widespread species such as the turtle dove, grey partridge, house sparrow and starling.
Alarmingly, red listed species now account for more than one-in-five (21 per cent) of all the UK's bird species. This is a far higher proportion than compared to the last assessment in 2002, when 40 species (16 per cent) were red listed. Most species on the red list have suffered a recent halving of range or population in the UK, or have undergone a historical decline since 1800.
Rich Hearn, WWT's Head of Species Monitoring, said:
"The inclusion of wintering waterbirds on the red list for the first time due to severe declines in numbers highlights an increasingly widespread phenomenon, that of climate-change driven shifts in distribution. These migrant waterbirds, along with many others on the amber list, are visiting the UK in smaller numbers.
"Whilst they may not currently be declining at a population scale, uncertainties exist over whether such shifts will have detrimental effects in the longer term. Furthermore, our ability to track their status will become more difficult unless there is greater investment elsewhere in developing monitoring schemes like those well-established in the UK.
"Breeding waterbirds are declining too. Our common scoter population has fallen by more than 80 percent, and almost 50 percent in the past 12 years. Despite this, relatively little is known about this unobtrusive duck and ecological research is thus urgently required in order to ascertain the causes of its rapid decline."
