Down to the wire
A British species that most UK birders have never seen? Keith Betton takes a look at conservation efforts to save St Helena Plover, endemic to a remote island that is one of the UK’s Overseas Territories.
A British bird most UK birders have never seen? Keith Betton takes a look at a species endemic to a remote island.
As a young birder I imagined trying to see all the world’s wader species. Most are easy to find if you have the chance to travel, and indeed many are globetrotters themselves. But a few live in just one place, and St Helena Plover holds the record for having the smallest distribution. It lives only on St Helena, one of the most remote islands in the world, and there, due to its thin legs, it is known as the Wirebird.
After years of decline, the species is now doing well as a result of conservation action and its status has improved from Critically Endangered to Vulnerable. Getting to see this bird is hard. There are flights from South Africa, but these cost a fortune, and few ships stop at St Helena. However, in April 2018 I travelled from Argentina to the Cape Verde Islands via many of the Atlantic islands and had three days on St Helena. No prizes for guessing what my target bird was!
The island covers just 121 sq km and is 1,600 km west of Angola. It is one of 14 UK Overseas Territories and has a population of 4,500. St Helena Plover is a popular emblem for the island. It features on the flag, coat of arms, stamps and coins.
The species breeds in dry, midaltitude pasture and semi-desert areas where the grass or other broad-leaved herbs are low and have some bare ground. It likes to have open views to help early detection of approaching predators. Wetter upland pastures are avoided, perhaps because of the more difficult feeding conditions in taller, denser vegetation on steep slopes.
It catches ground-living insects using a run-and-grab technique. The nest is also on the ground and this simple scrape in the soil has a thin lining of dry grass stems and rootlets. These are used to cover the clutch of two eggs when an incubating adult leaves in response to disturbance. Like a number of other plover species, St Helena Plover defends its nest by luring predators away. The parent bird runs a short distance off as soon as a threat is detected and then pretends to have a broken wing in order to draw the predator away from the nest.
Threats to Wirebird
St Helena Plover has suffered a steady decline for much of the last 40 years and the population fell at an alarming rate after the 1970s. Survey data shows that in the late 1980s there were 450 birds, declining to 350 by the late 1990s. In 2006 only 208 adult birds were found and as a result in the following year the species was categorised as Critically Endangered.
These declines were caused by a mixture of factors. Most of the island’s native flora and fauna has disappeared and much of the land has been adapted for agriculture. People have imported domestic animals and there have also been unintentional introductions of pests such as rats. Introduced in
1815, Common Mynas are now the commonest bird on the island and will take plover eggs given a chance. The effects of cats and rats have varied between sites, but in some areas more than 80% of Wirebird nests have been destroyed.
In 2011 a programme of removing
these introduced animals commenced.
Jonathan Hall, the RSPB’s Head of UK Territories, explains: “We managed to persuade the UK Government to specifically fund a tailored Wirebird mitigation project.
This has made a huge difference to the birds’ success rate. Our partnership with St Helena National Trust has been an excellent one, as we have together unpicked the interactions between Wirebirds, feral cats and rodents, and established an evidencebased conservation plan which has clearly delivered positive impacts.”
Part of that conservation initiative has been to improve pastureland to provide benefits both for the birds and the island’s farmers. More than 150 ha of habitat have been enhanced due to this. However, while the conservation work was having a positive impact, the UK Government also financed the new St Helena airport which opened in 2017. This is on land that is regularly used by St Helena Plover. A wind farm has also been built across one of the main breeding areas. So far, though, the series of huge turbines appears to have had no obvious negative effect.
A more recent worry has been the proposal to build the Wirebird Hills hotel and golf course in one of the five most important breeding areas for the plover. Plans have been put on hold – perhaps a benefit of COVID? But even in ‘normal’ years the number of tourists visiting the island is tiny. So maybe this planned investment will go elsewhere. Communication with the island’s residents has also been important, but despite this being the island’s national bird, too many of them get hit by vehicles when they occasionally stand in the road. Last year three were killed in just one week. There are now warning signs to alert people to take care.
Fresh hope
The plover’s numbers have improved since the recovery work started. When I visited, the annual survey found 627 adults. Since then there has been a slight drop and there were only 537 this year. This is thought to be linked to increased land use in breeding areas. In addition, increased road traffic near to the airport has resulted in more than 20 birds being killed in recent years.
This is one of the UK’s rarest birds, and only a handful of UK citizens have seen it. So congratulations to everyone for putting in the work to save this bird. If the UK doesn’t look after its endemic birds, nobody else will. ■