A cry for the endangered curlew – and what can be done to save it

Britain’s largest wader could disappear within years unless we take action, says Alastair Jamieson

Curlews in the creek at Devoran in Cornwall (Marie Bird)

Its melancholic, haunting warble can be heard for miles – even across the most blustery wind. But the distinctive curlew, once a common sound on Britain’s moors and coasts, is one of our most endangered bird species.

Rapid changes to countryside habits around the world mean the Eurasian Curlew is on the “red list“ of most threatened UK species and could disappear from our shores altogether within a decade. Conservationists report a catastrophic decline in breeding populations, as the open meadows and grasslands where ground-nesting curlews keep their eggs are increasingly turned over for forestation to fight the climate crisis or intensive farming.

Britain is of global importance to the curlew, with around 30 per cent of Europe’s population wintering here, while its higher moorlands were once ideal for spring and summer breeding. Since the 1980s, England and Scotland have lost 60 per cent of their curlews, while Wales has seen numbers fall by more than 80 per cent. In Ireland, there were 5,000 breeding pairs as recently as the 1990s; now there are 105.