Abstract

AbstractWet grassland populations of wading birds in the United Kingdom have declined severely since 1990. To help mitigate these declines, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has restored and managed lowland wet grassland nature reserves to benefit these and other species. However, the impact of these reserves on bird population trends has not been evaluated experimentally due to a lack of control populations. We compared population trends from 1994 to 2018 among 5 bird species of conservation concern that breed on these nature reserves with counterfactual trends created from matched breeding bird survey observations. We compared reserve trends with 3 different counterfactuals based on different scenarios of how reserve populations could have developed in the absence of conservation. Effects of conservation interventions were positive for all 4 targeted wading bird species: Lapwing (Vanellus vanellus), Redshank (Tringa totanus), Curlew (Numenius arquata), and Snipe (Gallinago gallinago). There was no positive effect of conservation interventions on reserves for the passerine, Yellow Wagtail (Motacilla flava). Our approach using monitoring data to produce valid counterfactual controls is a broadly applicable method allowing large‐scale evaluation of conservation impact.

Highlights

  • Resumen: Las poblaciones de aves zancudas en los pastizales húmedos del Reino Unido han declinado gravemente desde 1990

  • The Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) grids used for the benchmark counterfactuals consisted primarily of farmland (45.5%), wet grassland transects (19.9%), and other seminatural grassland transects (12.7%), whereas the liberal counterfactuals consisted primarily of farmland (67.3%) and other habitat types (24.7%)

  • We found that lowland wet grassland conservation has benefitted Lapwing, Redshank, and Curlew populations and, if an atypical site is excluded, that it benefitted Snipe

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Summary

Introduction

Resumen: Las poblaciones de aves zancudas en los pastizales húmedos del Reino Unido han declinado gravemente desde 1990. Comparamos las tendencias poblacionales entre 1994 y 2018 de cinco especies de aves de importancia para la conservación, que se reproducen dentro de estas reservas naturales, mediante tendencias hipotéticas creadas a partir de los censos de observación de. From 2010 to 2018, £817 million was spent on average each year to promote and protect biodiversity in the United Kingdom alone (Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, 2019) Despite these efforts, biodiversity indicators in the United Kingdom continue to decline (Hayhow et al, 2019). Whether population changes in target species are caused by the management measures or represent changes that would have occurred in the absence of that management remains untested

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