Curlews: Conservation and Ecology
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether his Department plans to work with devolved Administrations to improve the sharing of data on curlew (a) ecology and (b) population health.
Answered by Mary Creagh
Data on UK-wide curlew ecology and population health is primarily gathered and shared through the British Bird Survey (BBS) and the Birds of Conservation Concern (BoCC) review.
The BBS is the main scheme for monitoring the population changes of the UK’s common and widespread breeding birds to include the curlew. This publication presents trends for breeding bird populations in the UK and for each UK country, showing change in population between 1994 and 2024. UK and country-level trends are also reported for more recent shorter time periods (1-year, 5-year, and 10-year).
The BoCC review is compiled by a coalition of the UK’s leading bird conservation and monitoring organisations and reviews the status of all regularly occurring birds in the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. The bird species that breed or overwinter, to include the curlew, have been assessed against a set of objective criteria and placed on the Green, Amber or Red lists to indicate an increasing level of conservation concern. Curlew is red-listed in the latest BoCC.
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