RSPB Scotland, Insh Marshes Curlew Habitat Restoration

Project Name

RSPB Scotland, Insh Marshes Curlew Habitat Restoration

Project Type

FCC Scottish Action Fund - Conservation

Our Funding

£31,828

Total Project Cost

£48,541

The Eurasian Curlew is Europe’s largest wading bird, and the UK is one of the most important countries for Curlew, hosting 40% of the EU and 27% of the global breeding population. However the curlew is listed as globally near threatened, and the UK population has almost halved since the mid-1990s, with similar declines witnessed across Europe.

RSPB Insh Marshes nature reserve’s 700ha of floodplain supports around 80 breeding pairs of curlew and in order to safeguard and hopefully increase the population, habitat improvements were needed.

A new access track and three bridges were built to facilitate the movement of grazing animals to support habitat management across part of the reserve previously too difficult to reach. The track enables grazing and habitat management works to be undertaken to create the type of vegetation cover ground nesting species require and allowed for the removal of scrub and willow from the marshes, restoring the open landscape preferred by curlew.

The project also included the purchase of equipment to enable ongoing management and monitoring of the site and its population of curlew. To maintain a stable population, each pair of curlews must fledge 0.5 chicks, but previous monitoring was unable determine rates. The final part of the project was to recruit volunteers to find and monitor nests, allowing chicks to be ringed to gauge fledging success and ensure habitat management is optimized for not only curlew but other species, also of conservation concern such as snipe and redshank.