Chapter 12
There is a phrase I often heard in my childhood in Stoke-on-Trent that has stuck in my memory: ‘Stop mithering an’ get on w’it’; a Midlands exaltation to quit moaning and just do whatever it is that needs to be done. It is a mantra I have tried to live by in adulthood, with varying degrees of success. But as I became aware of the decline of curlews, it rang loud and clear. I had been increasingly mithering about the plight of the curlews, but I didn’t know what to do about it. The only way to find out was to go and walk through their land. Not just to the hotspots, but to the places where they no longer call over the hills and fields. I couldn’t be sure it would help, but it felt like the right thing to do.
The 500-mile odyssey I planned took me over mountains, along rivers, into towns, across moorland and through fields. I wandered happily along car-free tracks and plodded down main roads, buffeted by the backdraught of passing lorries. I rowed across lakes to explore islands and searched for curlews on shooting estates, nature reserves and amongst the practical muck and clutter of farms. I marvelled at their abundance in some places and despaired at the silence of the landscape in others. Standing on the edge of an Irish peat bog, I heard the lonely cry of curlews in the distance, a solitary pair defending their nest when there should have been many more of their kind alongside them. But on a heather-clad hillside in Yorkshire I was transfixed by the surround sound of bubbling calls, a soul-inspiring and uplifting experience. By the end of the summer, the same moor resounded with gunfire aimed at grouse.
Along the way, I learned a lot about the rollercoaster fortunes of curlews on these small islands at the western edge of Europe; how numbers have waxed and waned depending on our activities. At times they have been accidental beneficiaries of our endeavours, but now they are unintended victims. Even though numbers have been falling for some time, it has not been until very recently that we have done anything specifically for them; we simply haven’t thought of curlews in that way before, as birds in need of our help. They have always just been there in the background, flying over bog, meadow and moor, transforming birdcalls into music. They have been acknowledged and appreciated, certainly, but we have been blind to the threats that we pose to them. Now, there is a race against time. But what to do about it is another matter, not helped by their still being so mysterious. Even though the UK holds around a quarter of the world’s population of breeding curlews, we have learned surprisingly little about them over the years. There are so many unanswered questions, and that knowledge gap seems a painful omission as they slip away.
What we are sure of is that the last 150 years have changed everything. Their traditional upland breeding areas once had enough calling curlews for them to become inextricably part of our imaginings, inspiring myth and folklore in abundance. Then, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the great curlew migration was under way. The invention of the breech-loading gun, which made shooting widely accessible, and the maintenance of heather moorland helped their numbers increase. The growing populations spread their wings and spilled downhill and into the lowlands. For the first time, they made new homes in lowland farmland, finding good nesting sites in insect-rich, damp fields and wildflower meadows. We had tempted curlews into our lives and we marvelled at the new songs that enriched our lives. Very quickly they joined the familiar coterie of loved farmland birds, to become as much a part of spring and summer as skylarks, yellowhammers and turtledoves. It was as though they had always been there, and we assumed they always would be.
The old-fashioned farming regime suited them well. The landscape was diverse, higgledy-piggledy, full of niches that served a whole array of wildlife. Many species of bird, mammal, insect and wildflower thrived. As 75 per cent of the land surface of the UK is used for either growing crops or grazing, this was valuable living space. Then, quite suddenly, we moved the goalposts. The shock of national food shortages in the Second World War increased demands on farmers. We wanted abundant, home-grown cheap food, and the only way to achieve this was to turn slow-paced, mixed farms into uniform, fast-paced killing fields. The agricultural revolution speeded up, intensified and increased production. It upped the use of chemicals to kill insects and to fertilise the soil. Hedges were removed to extend the growing areas and to allow ever-larger machines to work the land. As a means of getting more out of the same area, it’s been highly successful. We have seen a four-fold increase in yield between 1945 and 2000.1 About 55 per cent of our current food consumption is home-grown, which is the same as in the 1950s, even though the population of the UK has increased by 50 per cent. And it has been achieved without a large hike in prices. The average family in the 1950s spent a third of their income on food; today it is half that.
Nothing, however, is given for free. The cost was passed on to the land in the form of pollution of fresh waters, degradation and loss of topsoil, increased greenhouse gas emissions, flood damage and massive declines in wildlife. Human health was also affected as the incidence of asthma, certain cancers and allergies increased.
For those parts of the natural world that had come to rely on our traditional ways of producing food, the writing was on the wall. For curlews, the onslaught is constant. In early spring, large rollers flatten the ground ahead of planting, and shortly afterwards swift blades cut the pastures multiple times. Untold numbers of eggs and chicks perish. And if the machines don’t get them, many fall prey to foxes, crows, ravens and badgers, the omnivorous predators that survive well in this new, disturbed landscape. Insects, a food source for the curlew chicks so crucial in the spring and summer months, have succumbed to pesticides and thinned out. Death through starvation is not unknown.
A hundred years after the new moon birds colonised our farmland, the decline was clear. Curlews are remarkably site-faithful and they continue to arrive each spring, drawn back to the same fields year on year, but they now touch down in the midst of trouble.
The intensification of farming didn’t affect the uplands, but there are huge pressures here, too, and numbers are dropping. Drainage and improvement of the land for agriculture, forestry, leisure activities, increased livestock densities and predation continue to take their toll. And it is on the hills, peat bogs and heathlands, in what is commonly thought of as wild and remote land, that they are unwittingly embroiled in the most aggressive conflicts in conservation – namely turf-cutting, grouse moor management, predator control and renewable energy development. Curlews themselves excite no angst, but are surrounded by anger and division, caught up in the crossfire of cultural, social and economic conflicts.
Up on the moors and down in the fields we have created an incongruous situation where a bird of the wilderness, described by the author and naturalist W.H. Hudson as ‘… some filmy being, half spirit and half bird’, now depends on us for its survival. The trouble is, we’re not very dependable. We are highly political animals with differing agendas, very often separated by bitter divides.
And if all this conflict and tension isn’t enough, looming on the horizon for curlews, along with everything else, is that most formless and formidable of man-made threats, the ever-growing menace of climate change. In 2016 the increase in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere surged to an astonishing 50 per cent higher than the average of the last ten years, and is now over 400 parts per million. The last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration of CO2 was three to five million years ago, when the climate was up to 3°C warmer, the polar icecaps were virtually nonexistent and sea levels were around 20 metres higher. The UK has already seen a one-degree rise in temperature over the last 100 years, and 0.5 degrees since the 1970s. This warming climate is predicted to bring wetter springs and summers, more torrential downpours, frequent floods and droughts and a shift in timing of the seasons. It’s bad news for all of us, but for birds like curlews it could be devastating. Tiny chicks cannot withstand wet weather for too long before dying of hypothermia, and if there is a period of drought the ground becomes too hard for the adults to feed by probing the soil. An increase in heavy rainfall in winter also affects adults trying to tough out the coldest months of the year by the coast. There is already a measurable shift in the locus of wintering populations towards the east of Europe, perhaps because they now don’t need to travel so far to find warmer winter weather.
It is, of course, of paramount importance that we continue to reduce greenhouse gas emissions if we are to contain the effects of a shifting climate in the long term. Some of the solutions on the table for reducing carbon emissions involve planting more forests to absorb carbon dioxide, and an increase in the numbers of wind and solar farms. These are often sited on damp, marginal areas to protect land for crops, and they threaten to reduce further the places where curlews and other waders can nest and feed. Curlew conservation highlights how green agendas are increasingly clashing in these small crowded islands, where the landscapes of Britain and Ireland are more and more being forced to multi-task. As I walked across the British Isles, tracking the birds through their breeding season in both the lowlands and the uplands, I saw for myself the mismatch between what curlews need to thrive and how we use the land. Overlay a map of ideal curlew breeding habitat onto a map of the UK and Ireland showing present agriculture, industry and leisure, and the problems are obvious. Change that map to one of future land use, and the problems increase.
The issues that impinge upon this bird of meadow and moor are huge, no less than an ever-growing human population and the transformation of the Earth’s atmosphere. We will have to dig deep into our reserves of compassion for wild things to secure their future. And curlews can give us nothing in return but songs of the soul and a glimpse of wildness.
Some would argue that this is the way of things, that curlews were always living on borrowed time on these densely populated and busy islands. Only creatures that can fit into our agendas should keep their place – adapt or die. But then, I fear, we are heading towards what the eminent biologist Edward Wilson calls ‘The Age of Loneliness’, a time when only generalist scavengers will survive alongside us. The creatures of the niches, of an unpredictable, diverse and surprising world, cannot continue to exist. Faced with this miserable vision of a monochrome future, is it not better to hold on to beauty and wonder wherever we find it? At the moment curlews provide both all year round.
But how to hold on to them? I saw precious few curlews on my walk. Dispiritingly, much of the land they once occupied no longer rang with their calls. But on the upside, I met engaged, determined people doing what they can to hold on to the birds where they still survive. They mostly work alone, or in small groups, and most are financially unsupported. True passion, though, isn’t driven by money (but it does help enable it). These fast-acting, pragmatic and dynamic conservationists are fired by the human engine of enthusiasm. I like to think of them as small mopeds, whizzing around the streets and dodging in and out of the traffic jams caused by the large and often lumbering trucks of government departments and some large conservation organisations. Unencumbered by having to please a large membership, or wait for the approval of a hierarchy, they can just get on with it. They are bright spots in an otherwise darkening sky, bringing hope of fair weather ahead, but they are largely isolated and unconnected. This was particularly true for Ireland and southern England. The northern moors of England and the uplands of Scotland and parts of Wales have the attention of the RSPB. Its top-down, uniform, more rigidly structured management allows the coordination of the complex and expensive five-year (but as of 2018, eight year) Trial Management Project (detailed in Chapter 3). This plan is using scientifically based management to tease out the main problems for upland curlews and find out what needs to be done to stem their decline, which is alarming even in their heartlands. Also, curlews seem to be benefiting from some of the ruthless management of grouse moors. It is in the low-lying peat bogs and marginal grasslands of Ireland and the lowland farmland of the UK where the situation is, quite simply, desperate. With this in mind, a series of Curlew Workshops, concentrating on curlew populations away from their strongholds, seemed to be a good way forward to build on the momentum of the walk, and the idea has been met with widespread support and enthusiasm.
The Irish workshop happened very quickly and took place just six months after I finished walking, at the end of 2016. It was supported by An Taisce (the National Trust for Ireland) and the Irish National Parks and Wildlife Service. It was hosted by the New Forest Estate, a golf club at Tyrrellspass, County Westmeath, situated right in the centre of Ireland. Poignantly, it is surrounded by peat bogs being cut for power generation. New Forest generously offered their venue for free, without which I doubt the meeting could have taken place. This happenstance came out of a fun night of drinking and storytelling in the house of Jean McMahon, who offered to put me up as she lived close to my route. The welcome was genuine and warm. The evening of craic with Jean’s family made this one of the best nights of the trip. Her partner, Jimmy O’Sullivan, was the connection to New Forest and he offered to try to secure the free use of the venue. He was true to his word. A light of hope for curlews was born out of pure Irish generosity.
The workshop took place in the dining room of New Forest on a bright and sunny November day. The dining tables and chairs were rearranged to make a meeting room to accommodate 100 people from all kinds of backgrounds. Here, the real world of the curlew, wild, windy and rich in sound and atmosphere, was represented in a series of PowerPoint presentations showing graphs with precipitous declines. The most startling and sobering statement of the day was made by Alan Lauder, an environmental consultant: given the present population level of only 130 pairs of curlews nesting in Ireland, and the woeful number of fledglings they produce each year, they will be extinct as a breeding bird on Irish soil in around seven years, i.e., by 2023. The population graph showed a steep downward curve, plummeting to nothing in a very short time. The room was hushed, as the reality of the outside world became horribly clear.
The disquiet in the room at the end of the presentations gave way to a collective determination to turn things around. The result was the establishment of a Curlew Task Force, approved by Heather Humphreys, then the minister responsible for natural heritage, the government department with responsibility for wildlife and conservation. The Task Force’s job is to drive the conservation of the last 130 pairs of curlews dotted throughout the country. It is being led by Barry O’Donoghue from the National Parks and Wildlife Service and is chaired by Alan Lauder.
Thirty people make up the Task Force, representing a wide range of interests from beef and milk producers to forestry and turf-cutters, as well as conservationists, academics and government agencies. They have no easy task. Southern Ireland is a complex place around which to manoeuvre, with powerful groups representing different interests, often at odds with conservation. Tradition and rights play a big part in how Ireland operates, and so, of course, does money. Wildlife organisations are much smaller and less mainstream than in the UK, so there is less organised pressure to help counteract the huge forces driving economic development. BirdWatch Ireland has around 14,000 members and is by far the largest (for comparison, the RSPB has over one million), and it does its best, as do An Taisce and the Irish Wildlife Trust. Even though these voices of protest punch above their weight, they are all too often drowned out by the roar of what is seen as economic progress. The Curlew Workshop therefore trod a delicate line, but it was determined to be inclusive, and to listen to all views. It offered a place at the table to anyone who could make a difference to the future of the curlew in Ireland. It was bound to be a robust meeting, and at times it certainly was, but it produced results.
An ingenious structure for what is now called the Curlew Conservation Programme was devised by the National Parks and Wildlife Service. It operates in the six main areas where curlews nest – hotspots identified in 2016 as holding sixty-eight breeding pairs, 55 per cent of the known total. Specific posts have been established, including Curlew Advisory Officers, who carry out surveys and advise on the practicalities of conservation; Nest Protection Officers, who protect the eggs and chicks during the breeding season (for example, with electric fencing, predator control and so on); Curlew Research Officers, who collect data; and, importantly and uniquely, Curlew Champions, who are the vital link between the project and the local people, a part of the conservation jigsaw that is all too often forgotten. The programme is still being developed, but having people out in the fields and in the communities with a specific remit for curlew protection has to be something to celebrate. This, combined with a new system of payments for farmers who have curlews on their land and who undertake to look after them, should bode well for the future. This initiative hasn’t come a moment too soon. The results for 2017 show a further drop in curlew numbers; even in the hotspot areas just sixty pairs were found, compared to sixty-eight the year before. The report states, ‘Of these sixty pairs, the breeding success of forty-four pairs was determined; with just fourteen pairs believed to have reared chicks. The total number of juveniles recorded to have fledged was sixteen, representing a breeding productivity of 0.38 fledglings/breeding pair, which is below the threshold required for a stable population.’ Southern Ireland has its work cut out, but the Task Force is under way and determined to do what it can.
As I walked through the peat bogs of central Ireland, I witnessed at first hand the devastation of the inland raised bogs. The once vast areas of unique habitat have been fragmented and turned into farmland, or ploughed up and burned in peat-fired power stations. It was a highly visible cause of curlew decline. The use of the bogs is one major concern, but industrial levels of peat extraction are being phased out over the next decade in favour of greener fuels. Perhaps the biggest threat that curlews face in Southern Ireland is the proposed increase in forestry to offset increasing carbon emissions. Ireland is failing to meet its European obligations to reduce CO2 by 20 per cent by 2020. Emissions from agriculture are, in fact, expected to rise by 7 per cent, and as farming contributes nearly half of Ireland’s greenhouse gas emissions, the trend is decidedly going the wrong way. For example, the expected 16 per cent increase in dairy cows by 2020, with the associated demands for silage, can only result in more emissions and present more challenges for field-nesting waders like curlew. Ireland’s Environmental Protection Agency report states, ‘It is clear that Ireland faces significant challenges in meeting emission reduction targets for 2020 and beyond. Further policies and measures above and beyond those already in place and planned in the period to 2020 are essential in order to position Ireland on a pathway towards a low-carbon, climate-resilient and environmentally sustainable economy.’
Faced with this stark assessment, the mitigation of increasing CO2 emissions is essential, and more forestry is seen as one way to do that. Encouraged by government subsidies, 46,000 hectares of new forest is planned by 2020, along with nearly 1,000 kilometres of forest roads. Private investment companies are taking advantage of the Government’s tax-free incentives and buying up marginal grasslands and what is called High Nature Value farmland, in order to plant trees. All too often these are densely packed stands of non-native Sitka spruce. Sitka is a fast-growing conifer that already makes up more than half of all Ireland’s forests. Even small-scale farmers on marginal land are being encouraged to devote their ‘non-productive’ land to trees. Not only can this eat directly into areas needed by wildlife like curlews, skylarks, meadow pipits, cuckoos, red grouse, hen harriers, marsh fritillary butterflies, orchids and so on, it also further fragments the landscape and provides more habitat for foxes, badgers and crows. Many species of ground-nesting birds, including curlews, won’t nest in an area of up to 500 metres around woodland because of the presence of predators. The amount of suitable nesting land that is taken out of use is therefore greater than just the area of plantation.
A bewildering situation now exists in Ireland, whereby one farmer with nesting curlews on his land may receive subsidies to protect them, while their next-door neighbour could be being paid to plant forest that removes feeding and roosting areas, as well as sheltering the predators that threaten them and their young. In effect, tax payers’ money is being used to plant up the last few remaining habitats needed by rare and declining birds like the curlew and the hen harrier – birds that Ireland is required by European law to protect.
It may seem like a hopeless situation, but we have to believe it isn’t. Paddy Sheridan, the conservationist in County Kildare (introduced in Chapter 6), wrote to me at the end of 2017 to tell me that progress is being made with turf cutters in the area and there is a renewed spirit of cooperation to find a solution. There is still a love of curlews in Ireland, especially amongst the older generation, who can remember what a positive presence they were in their younger lives. Hope lies in that ancestral love of wildlife and, once tapped into, it may be powerful enough to turn things around. And, as an early Christmas present, in December 2017 it was announced that a number of projects in rural Ireland are to be funded under the new European Innovation Partnership. One of the projects that was successful in receiving support under this programme was for Curlew Conservation. It is a welcome boost for the Irish birds, and it is one step at a time, but each step takes us closer to saving curlews in Ireland.
Going deeper into the issues affecting curlews reveals what a complex, contradictory web of legislation we weave around ourselves and the natural world. Birds like curlews depend on this fragile tapestry, but at any moment it could unravel if the economics fail to stack up. In Ireland, it may already be too late, but at least for the time being the birds have, in just a few areas, been given a reprieve from the onslaught of economic development. They have been granted some time to build up numbers that may give them the resilience they need for future survival. But they must respond quickly and increase their numbers to a sustainable level as there is no guarantee that help will continue beyond the next few years. The measures put in place by the Task Force seem to be the only hope they have.
An injection of hope is also needed in the south of England. The Walk revealed the gaping north-south divide, where the vast majority of resources given to curlew conservation are concentrated in northern upland moors and hill farms. Therefore, the Call of the Curlew Workshop took place in February 2017 at the headquarters of the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust in Slimbridge, Gloucestershire. It was also supported by the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust and the RSPB. Just as the Irish workshop had shocked people into urgent action, so too did this meeting. The area under review encompassed everything south of an imaginary line between The Wash and Shrewsbury. Before the meeting, knowledge about southern curlews was sketchy and incomplete. What the day revealed was that fewer than 300 pairs still hang on, in pockets of up to forty pairs. They are dotted through the land from Cornwall to Shropshire and over to Breckland. Widespread and thin on the ground, for sure, but still a definite presence. As in Ireland, small groups or individuals were doing conservation work in their own patches, but there was little communication between them.
As the day progressed, a number of things became clear. The first was that southern birds occupy a surprising variety of landscapes. They nest in wet flushes on the top of Dartmoor, in hay meadows along the River Severn, and the Upper Thames valleys; elsewhere their nests can be found in silage fields in Shropshire, in the seasonal wet fields of the Somerset Levels, and peatland in the New Forest and acid grassland in Breckland. A small but increasing number, around ten pairs, are even nesting on the dry, chalky vegetation of Salisbury Plain. The pressures facing the birds and their habitats are very different to their northern relations, and there is work to be done to understand their needs.
The second revelation was the breadth of the problems they face, from intensive agricultural activities to the extraordinarily high levels of predation. Often over 90 per cent of the nests are destroyed at the egg stage, mainly by foxes and crows. And there is an awful lot of human disturbance. The south of England is densely populated, and increasingly so. People are everywhere doing all kinds of activities, and the impact on wildlife is growing. Birdwatching and photography were cited as a major cause of disturbance on Dartmoor, while dog walking is affecting the birds in the heathland of the New Forest and the Hams around Gloucestershire. While codes of conduct can be imposed in nature reserves, curlews rarely nest in them (the RSPB reserve of West Sedgemoor, in Somerset, is one exception). Their fate therefore lies in the hands of private landowners, many of whom have no idea that the birds are there in the first place or that they are in such a perilous state. Dartmoor, for example, has only four pairs left, but only one pair regularly attempts to breed. Dartmoor has seen just three fledglings survive in twelve years. The population of curlews in the New Forest has plummeted from 120 pairs in 2007 to just forty today, with only a handful of chicks recorded. In the lush meadows of Oxfordshire, there are fewer than fifty known pairs, and little is known about their fledglings. The study described in Chapter 8, carried out by Curlew Country in Shropshire, saw no chicks fledge from a total of forty nests in 2015 and 2016. During 2017 and 2018, Curlew Country trialled limited and proportionate predator control, erected some electric fencing as well as headstarting, resulting in a total of around 24 fledged chicks over those two years, which is a wonderful result and shows what can be achieved. It is sadly true, however, that lack of funding and hands-on help on the ground continue to cast a shadow over this pioneering project. All in all, curlews in southern England are suffering badly. In 2018, removing the results from the artificial technique of headstarting, out of 258 nests found we can confirm that only six chicks fledged naturally.
The situation in the south of England is therefore as desperate as it is in Ireland, with the birds heading for local extinction in many places. The solution that emerged during this workshop day, however, was not a Task Force along the Irish lines, but a central hub, called the Curlew Forum, which could disseminate information and act as a link between the various southern groups. Phil Sheldrake from the RSPB, Geoff Hilton from the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust, ornithologist Mike Smart and I now collect reports from the groups for each breeding season, gather and disseminate ideas and practical advice and organise yearly meetings for group representatives. An ambitious mission statement was agreed:
Our goal is to work with farmers and land managers to reverse the current decline, and continue monitoring the status of breeding curlew across southern England. We will do this by sharing knowledge and experience, raising awareness, offering advice, and securing funding to implement effective conservation measures.
All of this information is available on a new website, www.curlewcall.org, which is available to everyone who wants to know more about the practicalities of curlew conservation. The interest generated has attracted others in the south who would like to take part, and who think they may have curlews nesting in their areas. The network is spreading, as are new initiatives. The Forum is also establishing a standardised method of collecting and recording data so that the observations and numbers can be used for a national database.
The Curlew Forum can only work because of the deep-seated and profound love of wildlife that exists in British society. Britain is unique in having so many wildlife charities dedicated to everything from seaweed to red deer. Monitoring, recording and documenting the flora and fauna of the UK have been centuries-old pastimes. Gilbert White, Charles Darwin, many country vicars and Edwardian ladies, plumbers and professors have all contributed to a long and rich history of a love of nature, and have furnished us with a vast wealth of data. Britain must be the best-studied country on Earth. Everything that flutters, flies, blooms or creeps has had the undivided attention of armies of fascinated observers for generations. There are fewer field naturalists today, volunteers who can name and record their local wildlife; the skills of the naturalist are fading away, but they still exist, and birdwatchers are by far the largest group. Southern curlews are therefore fortunate to have bands of passionate birders concerned about their future. Providing a focal point for curlew groups, in the form of Curlew Forum, has so far proved very successful in bringing everyone together.
‘Torrential rain, hurricane-force winds and snow are about to batter swathes of the country as Storm Georgina tears in from the Atlantic,’ shouted the Express, the day before the third curlew workshop in Builth Wells in central Wales, on 24 January 2018. Throughout the night I lay awake listening to it rattle and pound the window of my bed and breakfast, worrying that just the organisers might turn up. But at 7.30am, it was as though someone turned off the switch. Georgina flounced out of Wales as quickly as she hurtled in. The hills overlooking the Royal Welsh Agricultural Showground were lit by a timid sunrise, peeking out to make sure the coast was clear. As light glinted off the puddles in the car park, we all breathed a sigh of relief.
The workshop was funded by Natural Resources Wales (NRW), the RSPB, the Welsh Ornithological Society, Ecology Matters and the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust. In total 121 people turned up, more than we had planned, and at least another forty would have liked to have come. TV presenter and naturalist, Iolo Williams, opened the meeting with a speech that marked the tone for the rest of the day: positive, forward-looking, collaborative and anchored in a love of the natural world. He described that, for him, the call of the curlew captured the spirit of the Welsh hills. As a young boy, he remembered walking with his grandfather, or taid in Welsh, in the Berwyn mountains, absorbing his gentle wisdom as curlews flew overhead. It reminded me of John Muir’s stories of his early years in Scotland. He too learned about wildlife from his grandfather, finding joy in the everyday creatures of local places. Discovering a nest of mice in a haystack took the three-year-old John to the edge of ecstasy, and I imagine Iolo was the same. Then, said Iolo, he became ‘a bag of hormones, more interested in girls and beer than nature,’ and moved to London. But even in the middle of cars and concrete, remembering the call of the curlew anchored his soul in the valleys and hills many miles to the west.
Iolo’s messages could not have been more apt. He touched on the Welsh love of the bird that signifies hiraeth, a deep yearning and longing for the Welsh homeland. He appealed to memory and culture by reminding people that there are at least thirty different local names for curlews, many relating to the bill and the beautiful calls. And, importantly, he asked everyone to approach the solutions to their peril with open hearts and minds. There is no time for assumed boundaries, he warned, the birds will disappear from the Welsh landscape if we don’t honestly and openly consider all options on how to help them. It was music to my ears as I looked around the room at the RSPB sitting next to the Countryside Alliance sitting next to farmers sitting next to local government sitting next to the Gamekeepers Association, and of course, many enthusiastic birdwatchers.
Iolo’s inspiring start to the day was underlined by a morning of presentations on the status and fortunes of curlews around Wales, including a sobering assessment of the Welsh population by Patrick Lindley, Senior Ornithologist for NRW. There are, he said, perhaps fewer than 400 breeding pairs left. There was a shocked silence in the room as the figure most often quoted is around 1,000. There is no doubt that much needs to be done, and done quickly.
The fact-finding talks were rounded off by Steve Redpath, Professor of Conservation at the University of Aberdeen. Free of PowerPoint and graphs, he simply stood in front of the audience and stressed the importance of working together from the start: ‘It isn’t going to be easy getting curlews back, but without building strong collaborations, exposing ourselves to different views, debating and listening, getting political and public support for some difficult choices and funding collaborative science to our advantage, I would argue it will be nigh on impossible. Don’t underestimate the challenge created by not moving forward together and don’t underestimate the power of moving forward together with a shared goal.’ In those few words, Steve laid down the challenge to all of conservation in the UK and Ireland.
A shared goal, however, does not guarantee a shared route to obtaining it. The only time in the day when there was a shift in the mood of the room was when Geoff Hilton from the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust suggested that the high numbers of foxes throughout the lowlands could be related to the release of 35 million pheasants into the countryside each year by the shooting industry. This must, he proffered, be keeping more foxes alive to eat more ground-nesting birds like curlews in the spring, making predator control a necessity in some areas. The research on this has yet to be done, but if the conversation had developed, I am sure there would have been tension.
‘People come to these issues with different understanding, experiences and values,’ said Steve. ‘Some would wish to concentrate on habitat management and feel uncomfortable about killing predators. Others recognise the value of killing predators, especially for ground-nesting species such as curlews. These positions are often very strongly held and, it seems, difficult to reconcile. We live in a polarised and adversarial world, where people often seek to impose their world view onto others … But if you all want to get curlews back, then you need to take ownership and work in partnership with those you disagree with.’ It is a tall order, not just for curlew conservation, but for many other species too.
The afternoon was dedicated to discussions in groups on the practicalities of saving Welsh curlews, and five main measures were identified: to establish an All-Wales Curlew Working Group, to implement immediate monitoring of key curlew populations, develop curlew-specific agri-environment schemes, engage farmers and landowners in the whole process, and raise public awareness of the decline of curlews. At the time of writing, these action points were being incorporated into an action plan drawn up by NRW, and the Welsh Ornithological Society had offered to drive it forward. The challenge now is to make this happen as quickly as possible, as the loss of each breeding season is a step closer to regional extinction.
The Welsh Curlew Workshop was an energising and inspiring day. Different organisations and their supporters came together for the sake of curlews and if that spirit continues then there is hope that Wales will turn the tide for the new moon bird. Steve Redpath summed up the challenges that lie ahead. ‘I would argue that the most fruitful way forward is likely to be through investing in building collaborative partnerships where you can deliberate and debate with those you disagree with and decide what the priorities and actions should be. Such approaches are not easy – they require energy, time, trust, a willingness to engage, to listen and to empathise. They also require humility.’ Humility and empathy are rare words in conservation circles, they stood out amongst the usual conservation terminology and were refreshing to hear. They seemed to strike a chord with the audience. Steve went on to say that partnerships on their own must be combined with good science. Without the scientific basis for action the divisions simply form again as people take an emotional rather than objective view. Balancing all of this is the fine art of good conservation. It is not always achieved, but it felt like the agenda had changed that day.
Very quickly after the meeting Curlew Cymru was established, a roundtable of conservation and shooting groups, and the government body National Resources Wales, united in a desire to work together across the country. To date they have split Wales into three regions: north, mid and south Wales. Work has begun to gather volunteers to find and monitor nesting pairs and establish a more accurate population estimate, as well as pin down the main problems. Mike Smart and I sat in on one meeting in 2018 and I had never seen so much constructive dialogue and determination to act between groups that are usually so far apart.
This desire to work across boundaries was also manifest in the 4th Curlew Workshop, held in Scotland in September 2018. Once again, farmers, foresters, conservationists, gamekeepers and politicians took part and there was unanimous support for boosting the curlew work proposed by the fledgling organisation Working for Waders, which was set up in 2017. There were, as in previous workshops, depressing statistics (‘it’s the end game for curlews in Argyll’, from farmer/conservationist Patrick Laurie), powerful science, inspiring talks, deep concern and an equal amount of determination to do something. For me, though, it was also an emotional day that marked the end of two and a half years of work for a bird with a long bill and a treasured song. As the day drew to a close I found it hard to hold back tears. So much had gone into getting to this point, so much of myself poured into curlew conservation, and I had no way of knowing where it would all go now. For days afterwards, I felt removed from reality and, I admit, a little lost.
When I set out on the Curlew Walk in April 2016 I thought I would simply be on a fact-finding mission, coupled with an exploration of the rich contribution that curlews have made to our lives. I imagined that the solution to their decline would be raising awareness of their plight and restoring their habitat. If this could be achieved, all would be well. That proved to be naïve. I was, in fact, heading straight into some of the most complex and difficult conservation issues of our time, issues involving culture, class, politics and economics. What emerged from all the subsequent talks and debates was that the most pressing issues that bear down on wading birds like curlews are the leviathans of climate change, increasing human population, how we feed ourselves, and how we will deal with the predator imbalance we have created across the land. The protection of wildlife like curlews draws us into ontological arguments about how we see our place on Earth alongside other species, and the rights we assume for ourselves over the natural world.
They also challenge us to think outside political and national boundaries – on the scale of landscapes. Curlews bind the coast to farmland to inland mountain slopes, and pretty much everything in between. They link county to county, country to country and the UK to Europe. They reinforce our global responsibility for life on an interconnected planet, yet this is not always a concept that is easy to accommodate.
The workshops have also suggested that we cannot for much longer avoid the issue of predator control. This nettle often proves too painful to grasp. Most wildlife organisations are reluctant to talk about it publicly for fear of alienating their memberships. The evidence, however, clearly shows that without reducing the number of, usually, foxes and crows in the breeding season, ground-nesting birds like curlews will not survive even the first half of the twenty-first century. It is an uncomfortable fact, but it is the reality of the situation we have created. Our fragmented countryside, warming climate and the spread of urbanisation have increased the numbers of those animals that are good at exploiting our agricultural and metropolitan landscapes. The same process has decreased the niches available for more specialist creatures that need diversity. There is no easy way for us to put this right. Shooting foxes or trapping crows is distasteful for many people who love wildlife, myself included, but I cannot see an alternative in the short term in the areas where ground-nesting birds like curlews still breed. Any control has to be what I term LTP: Local to the nesting area; Targeted to the predatory species known to be a problem (which varies from place to place); and Proportionate (not overkill, if you will forgive the pun). Releasing Armageddon on generalist predators would be utterly wrong; our response has to be sensitive and balanced, and only employed until the numbers of birds builds up again and they can fend off predators themselves. But this is a message that not everyone wants to hear.
The series of Curlew Workshops helped bring into focus all of this complexity and controversy, but it also brought together people who are passionate about creating a future for these birds. They revealed the immense difficulties that curlews face, but also the real love that exists for them. I have no idea whether the initiatives that have emerged are enough to secure their future, but at least we will have tried to help one species of curlew in one part of the Earth.
Out of the eight curlew species around the world, two have already most likely gone extinct. The last reliable sightings of the Eskimo curlew, a migrant species between Patagonia and the Arctic, were recorded in the early 1960s. They were once one of the most numerous water-birds in the world, until changes to the North American feeding grounds, and the greed of hunters that shot two million birds a year, ended the spectacle of their massed flights across the Americas. The last confirmed record of a single slender-billed curlew, another long-distance migrant whose peregrinations took it from Siberia to the Mediterranean, was in the late 1990s. After extensive searches, they too seem to have slipped away. Three out of the remaining six species are in various degrees of peril, including the Eurasian Curlew, and appear under the headings of Endangered, Vulnerable and Near-Threatened, titles no creature wants to inherit.
The cry of curlews is telling us about the state of wild, wet places, and reminding us of what we may lose. The unbearably sad, yet beautiful, Last of the Curlews, by Fred Bodsworth, imagines the final migratory flight of the last two Eskimo curlews on Earth. The female is shot by a hunter over North America, before they can reach their destination, leaving the male to arrive alone in the Arctic. He calls his haunting mating song to his lifelong partner in vain, but her body lies in the mud many miles to the south:
The snow-water ponds and the cobblestone bar and the dwarfed willows that stood beside the S twist of the tundra river were unchanged. The curlew was tired from the long flight. But when a golden plover flew too close to the territory’s boundary he darted madly to the attack. The Arctic summer would be short. The territory must be held in readiness for the female his instinct told him soon would come.
It is a painful read. In the afterword, Nobel physicist Murray Gell-Mann wonders if we have learned the lessons from their demise, from our careless and casual assumption that they will always be there. He writes that, ‘Seeking greater wisdom includes learning how to be a good ancestor as well as a caring relation.’
Being an ancestor of whom future generations will be proud is a daunting task. It will require a lot of us. The last forty years has seen a 50 per cent decline in the mass of wildlife on planet Earth. In the UK, half the number of birds sing and bees buzz, there are fewer flowers in the meadows, and fish in the sea. Overall natural sound, colour and vibrancy in our lives have diminished. Starkly, the 2016 State of Nature Report described the UK as one of the ‘most nature-depleted’ countries on Earth. The memory of a land alive with wildlife is fading away and a threadbare landscape is becoming the norm. E.O. Wilson’s predicted Age of Loneliness is dawning. The challenge is to transform the twenty-first century into the Age of Abundance.
Perhaps curlews have a part to play in making this happen. Recounting their myriad myths and legends about life, death, joy and hope reminds us that the natural world is an endless repository of wonder and creativity. Their haunting calls have the ability to coalesce emotions, and they have inspired stories so rich that they expose our psyche, allowing us to express what is so often difficult to articulate. They touch the spiritual as well as excite the scientific, they are both known and mysterious, making them binders of different worlds. Birds like curlews have contributed so much to our cultural, scientific, aesthetic and spiritual lives, and inspire so much of what makes us human. To lose them would be to diminish ourselves, and to diminish our ability to express what we feel so deeply.
We are fortunate that they are still with us, and we have time to do the right thing – to allow them to live wild lives on a whirling, blue, sparkling planet that we all call home. Astronauts who first looked back on planet Earth from the early space missions were moved by the sight of this iconic blue marble wrapped in lace, unique and full of life. Space Shuttle astronaut Loren Acton wrote:
Looking outward to the blackness of space, sprinkled with the glory of a universe of lights, I saw majesty – but no welcome. Below was a welcoming planet. There, contained in the thin, moving, incredibly fragile shell of the biosphere is everything that is dear to you.
He was deeply moved by what he saw, and if he could have heard the Earth, too, he could somehow have listened in to our singing planet, he would have heard wind, rain, oceans, thunder, the songs of whales and the howling of monkeys. He would have heard the rich and varied music of birds and would have caught the haunting sound of hiraeth, of love, loss, joy and sorrow that is the call of the curlew. It would be a tragedy if, on our watch, we let that cry fade away from the song of the Earth.
