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Wading birds hit by drought |
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Saturday, 01 April 2006 |
Wading birds hit by drought
The drought in south-east England is disastrous for the region's wading birds, the RSPB has warned.
Rare
wetland birds such as lapwing, redshank and snipe are facing their
worst ever breeding season, according to the Royal Society for the
Protection of Birds.
The drought, after 18 months of below
average rainfall in the region, has left the birds' few remaining
breeding grounds parched and they are struggling to find suitable pools
and marshes where they can nest and raise chicks.
The RSPB said
the number of waders successfully breeding on its nature reserves in
Kent and Sussex fell dramatically because of last year's dry summer,
and the recent dry autumn and winter mean this year will be even worse.
Phil
Burston, senior water policy officer at the RSPB, said unless there was
heavy rain in the next few weeks there could be almost no fledglings
hatched this year, and any that were hatched could starve.
Some
birds have already started their mating rituals, he said, but if they
cannot find a suitable spot they will not bother to lay eggs.
He
said: "The critical period is the next three or four weeks. If it
doesn't wet up these birds aren't going to even begin to nest down and
breed. For some it could already be too late for this year."
This
would see already depleted populations dwindle still further, and the
birds might disappear from the region altogether if water shortages
continue, he said.
The worst affected RSPB reserve is Elmley
Marshes on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent, which usually hosts more than 200
pairs of lapwing. But last year, the driest on record, just 65 pairs
bred successfully.
This winter has brought little relief.
Reserve Warden Barry O’Dowd said: "The prospects for the spring are
very bleak – what should be a sparkling water-filled oasis is dry and
barren."
At the RSPB’s Rainham Marshes reserve east of London,
water levels are already almost as low as they were last summer.
Reserve Manager Nick Bruce-White said: "We will be in dire straits if
we don’t get lots of rain soon.
"Rainham is a very important
site for breeding waders but each year the situation gets worse. If we
had enough water we could increase their numbers by 100 or 200 per
cent."
Pool and spring water is also drying up at Pulborough
Brooks in West Sussex. Pulborough Warden Pete Hughes said: "Some birds
may not be in good enough condition to lay eggs now because the site is
too dry. The edges of pools are the only places where adult birds bring
their young to feed and hungry chicks could take twice as long to
fledge, and so be vulnerable for twice as long.
"We can’t prove
that chicks starved last year but it was obvious that there were very
few around. The same is likely to happen again."
Chicks need a
ready supply of grasshoppers, mosquitos and earthworms to grow, but
they are only found in moist conditions, said Mr Burston.
He added: "The ground should be spongy, it should give way under foot. But now it's very hard. That's not good for insects."
Populations
of these birds have declined after vast areas of their breeding grounds
have been destroyed, mostly through draining low-lying land for arable
farming but also for developments such as shipyards on the Thames.
The
number of snipe in the England and Wales has dropped by 60 per cent in
the past two decades and there are estimated to be fewer than 10 pairs
breeding outside the New Forest and nature reserves.
Lapwing and
redshank numbers have fallen 40 and 21 per cent respectively over the
same period. Apart from on nature reserves there are only a few dozen
pairs in the whole of the south-east, Mr Burston said.
Many of
the RSPB reserves are artificially managed to maintain the ideal
conditions, with dicthes and pools dug to keep the area wet, but they
are limited in the amount of water they can extract from streams to
soak the reserve.
Meanwhile, surrounding farmland is kept dry by
electric pumps, even in a drought, and what little water is available
is sucked away and out to sea.
Mr Burston said: "At the same
time wetlands are dried out, water is being pumped as we speak from
places like Pevensey wetlands and Romney Marsh. It's a bizarre
situation where water is being pumped out at the same time as we're
desperately short of it."
The RSPB is calling on members of the
public to conserve water and wants all the thousands of new houses
planned for the region by John Prescott to be built to designs that
uses less water.
Mr Burston said: "It is putting intense
pressure on an already stressed environment. Relief can only come if we
reduce the amount of water we use in our homes and gardens, build all
new houses to much higher water efficiency standards, and reform the
unsustainable way we manage our water. The time to act is now because
the situation has become desperate." |
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