UK Red List updated

The UK Red List was updated this month

Birds of Conservation Concern 4: The Red List for Birds (BoCC4), has just been published by a group of scientists from the RSPB, WWT and BTO among others. Last updated in 2009, the conservation concern of 244 regularly occurring species has been assessed and the species placed into Green, Amber or Red categories. Species on the Red List are in need of concerted, focused conservation action or their population will continue to decline severely.

Yellow Wagtail Motacilla Flava. Eilat, Israel September 2015. This species is Red Listed due to declines in breeding population. This blue headed individual however belongs to the flava subspecies of mainland Europe.

The Lists

Red     : 67 (25.7%) species. A full 20 species were added, while three dropped down to Amber.
Amber : 96 species
Green  :81 species. An increase of 13 species dropped from Amber.

Look through the data and themes become apparent. Farmland birds are still in trouble, in fact this habitat group has the largest percentage of its species on the Red List (12 of 26). Atlantic Puffin, Black-legged Kittiwake and European Shag join other seabirds on the List, and Woodcock, Curlew, Ringed Plover and Dotterel double the number of wading birds. Wildfowl species are swelled by White-fronted Goose, Common Pochard, Long-tailed Duck and Velvet Scoter while the uplisting of Mistle Thrush means five of our six thrushes also find themselves on the Red List.

As the BTO points out, there are some signs of progress being made in stabilising these declines with European Nightjar and Bittern dropping from Red to Amber through population growth following targeted conservation efforts.

This paper is humbling as it shows very clearly the state of the UK's birds, and it is not a particularly hopeful one. More must be done, at all levels, to conserve our natural places and the creatures that inhabit them.

The full article published in British Birds can be found here and provides detail on the methodology and criteria used in the assessment process. An overview from the BTO can be found here which shows the Listed species concisely.

One interesting fact gleaned from the pages of the report is the removal of Wryneck from the breeding species list. Reported breeding in 54 counties up until 1900, they were so common the RSPB saw fit to sell specific nest boxes for them!

Wryneck Jynx torquilla. Eilat, Israel September 2015.