United front forms to fight for our curlew

HRH the Prince of Wales applauds a new partnership, which includes the RSPB and GWCT, that aims to conserve Britain’s ‘wonderful bird’

Author and campaigner Mary Colwell is to lead a new collaboration to try to save the rapidly vanishing Eurasian curlew. The England Curlew Recovery Partnership — which includes the GWCT, the British Trust for Ornithology, the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust and the RSPB — aims to turn round the decline in the population, which has halved in only 25 years. Habitat changes and everincreasing predator numbers have pushed the bird to the brink; it’s now almost absent as a breeding species in much of the UK.

The partnership is the outcome of curlew recovery summits hosted by HRH the Prince of Wales on Dartmoor in 2018 and at Highgrove in 2020.

“The hauntingly evocative cry of the curlew is now all too seldom heard,” said Prince Charles. “This most wonderful bird needs urgent support and I am delighted that, following meetings on Dartmoor in

March 2018 and at Highgrove in February 2020, the England Curlew Recovery Partnership has been formed to bring together all those who can help provide such support and, indeed, promote this crucial cause to the public; many of whom, I am sure, are unaware of quite how special the curlew is and the part that they can play in helping to save it for the benefit of current and future generations.”

Former BBC producer Ms Colwell, who wrote Curlew Moon, said: “The disappearance of curlews from across the open landscapes of England is deeply sad and a very tangible reminder of the crisis facing our wildlife. The Curlew Recovery

Partnership is determined to work together to find solutions to reverse its decline and to help transform our relationship with nature. It is an honour to be part of this initiative.”

Joining the project is the Bolton Castle estate in Wensleydale, North Yorkshire, where headkeeper Ian Sleightholm looks after wintering flocks of more than 1,000

THEY SAID WHAT

“The curlew is now almost absent as a breeding species in much of the UK”

birds. The estate won the Bellamy Award in 2019 for its outstanding curlew conservation efforts. Numbers of birds breeding on the estate rose to between 170 and 220.

Grouse moors where predators are rigorously controlled remain strongholds for the species.

The curlew has been pushed to the brink by predation and widespread loss of its habitat