Page 44 - BBC Wildlife Volume 36 #05

Curlew champion
Mary Colwell walked
500 miles to report
on the birds’ plight.

waders. Perhaps the widespread predator control to
encourage large numbers of red grouse for sport shooting
at the end of the 19th century allowed numbers to expand,
and the excess curlews spilled down the hillsides and onto
lowland farmland and heath. They found safe nesting THE CURLEW IDYLL WAS
in the higgledy-piggledy landscapes produced by mixed,
slow-paced farms. Along with many other insects, birds, NOT TO LAST. WE HAD
wildflowers, mammals and reptiles, they settled into our
pre-war landscapes with ease. TEMPTED THE BIRDS INTO
But the curlew idyll was not to last. We had tempted OUR LIVES… AND THEN
curlews into our lives, marvelled at their presence… and
then shifted the goal posts. The demand for plentiful SHIFTED THE GOAL POSTS.
home-grown food after the near-starvation during World
ja/Getty; chicks: curlewcountry.org; feed ng: Roger Powell/naturepl.com; eggs: Andy Sands/naturepl.com; nest ng: Mark Hamblin/Getty
War II changed everything. Numerous ‘traditional’ farms
turned into industrial units centred on one product.
Farming changed from being extensive (small-scale,
with low chemical inputs and a rotating mix of crops and
livestock) to intensive (large-scale, with high inputs of
chemicals and monocultures).
FAITHFUL BIRDS
It’s a story well told. The effects of this transformation are
still revealing themselves. Curlews joined skylarks, turtle
doves, grey partridges and many others in failing to
adapt. In particular, curlews can’t produce young in the
silage fields the hay meadows have been turned into.
Being highly site-faithful, curlews return to the same
spot each year, yet today many fields are cut repeatedly
from April onwards. Ground-nesting birds need time to
incubate eggs and raise vulnerable young chicks, before
the rollers flatten the ground and the blades start slicing.
The reality, though, is that millions of cows need food all
year and vast acreages of crops have to be grown. There
is no longer the time or space for curlews.
It’s not a sustainable system, this intensive way of
farming the land. It’s fast depleting the soils, producing
large quantities of greenhouse gases and eliminating
pollinators. But farmers are only doing what we’ve
demanded, and there’s no denying it’s worked so far.
We still produce over half of our own food – about the
Mary: Mary Colwell; farmland: Peter L catastrophic. A combination of large-scale destruction
same as in the 1950s, even though the UK population
has increased by 50 per cent.
In Ireland, the situation is nothing short of

of peat bogs to provide fuel for power stations and home
burning, the rapid spread of commercial forestry and
the intensification of farming, particularly during the
‘Celtic Tiger’ years (1997–2007), saw curlew numbers
44 BBC Wildlife