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BBS Research Conservation The Population status of birds in the UK Red data lists for birds, exist at a number of levels from global to national, but have the shared aim of identifying population status changes and, where possible, focusing finite resources on the most pressing conservation priorities. The then Nature Conservancy Council and the RSPB published the first national Red List for British birds in 1990. Red Data Birds in Britain used a series of largely quantitative criteria to judge the conservation status of each species. These criteria included, the international importance of populations, the rarity of breeding species, population decline, localised distribution, and special concern. The list was subsequently updated and expanded, and published as Birds of Conservation Concern (‘BoCC’: Gibbons et al. 1996) and Birds of Conservation Importance (‘BoCI’: JNCC 1996), which considered a wider range of qualifying criteria by virtue of improved data availability in both the UK and continental Europe. The revised listing considered population size and geographical range decline, historical population decline, rarity of breeding species, localised distribution, international importance, and both global and European conservation concern. Arguably, the most important advance in BoCC/BoCI, beyond the application of quantitative criteria, was the recognition that declines among widespread and common species should be reflected in the final listings. Lists of population status need to be updated to remain useful and the third assessment of the population status of birds in the UK has recently been published (Gregory et al. 2002) for which the BBS played an important role. The listing criteria are based on global conservation status, historical population declines, recent population declines (both in numbers and in geographical range), European conservation status, breeding rarity, localised distribution, and the international importance of populations. In this latest review the population status of 247 species in the UK were assessed: 40 were placed on the ‘Red list’, 121 on the ‘Amber list’, and 86 on the ‘Green list’. Further information on this latest review can be read on http://www.bto.org/psob/index.htm. Gibbons, D.W., Avery, M.I., Baillie, S.R., Gregory, R.D., Kirby, J., Porter, R.F., Tucker, G.M., & Williams, G. (1996) Bird species of Conservation Concern in the United Kingdom, Channel Islands and Isle of Man: revising the Red Data List. RSPB Conservation Review 10, 7-18. Gregory, R.D., Wilkinson, N.I., Noble, D.G., Robinson, J.A., Brown, A.F., Hughes, J., Procter, D, Gibbons, D.W. & Galbraith, C.A. (2002) The population status of birds in the United Kingdom, Channel Islands, and Isle of Man. British Birds 95, 410-448. JNCC. (1996). Birds of Conservation Importance. JNCC, Peterborough. ‘Quality of Life’ Indicators Bird population monitoring provides a great wealth of data, including long-term trends for many species across a wide geographical area. Although ornithologists and conservationists may be fascinated by such trends, politicians and their advisors will be unmoved, unless this mass of data can be summarized into simple statistics that can be understood readily by themselves and members of the public alike. If they are not, then other environmental statistics such as air and water quality will be used to monitor Governmental environmental policy, overlooking their impacts on wildlife. To this end, highly summarized statistics of bird population trends have been developed. An indicator based on highly summarized bird population trend data has become one of the UK Government’s 15 headline indicators of sustainable development and the ‘Quality of Life’ (Anon 1999). This indicator sits within a small set, most of which measure more traditional social, economic and environmental trends, such as life expectancy, educational qualifications and river quality. The ‘wild bird index’ (shown below) is a summary of the population trends of 139 of the more common native species that breed in the UK (Gregory et al. 1999). The index for each group of species (all species, or farmland and woodland species separately) was constructed by aggregating the individual population indices, each based on 1970=100, with each species given an equal weight in the index. The index was constructed using a logarithmic transformation of each species series and then taking the exponential of the average to form the overall index. This transformation was necessary because of the skewed nature of the distributions (i.e. because species can only decline by 100%, but can increase infinitely). Populations of birds in a group whose index rose from 100 to 200 will have doubled, on average, while those whose index fell from 100 to 50 will have halved. As is clear from this indicator, populations of birds on farmland have declined markedly in the UK since the mid-1970s. The UK Government is committed to reversing these declines by 2020 and will use this indicator to assess its performance. Data for the headline indicators come from a range of sources, notably the Common Birds Census (CBC), but the BBS is now being used to produce indicators at a regional level (Noble et al. 2002). Ongoing work is currently exploring the potential of producing joint CBC/BBS indicators as the BBS replaces the CBC as the principle national monitoring scheme for common and widespread breeding birds in the UK.
Anon. (1999) Quality of life counts: Indicators for a strategy for sustainable development for the United Kingdom: a baseline assessment. London: Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions. Gregory, R.D., Gibbons, D.W., Impey, A. & Marchant, J.H. (1999) Generation of the headline indicator of wild bird populations. BTO Research Report 221. BTO & RSPB, Thetford & Sandy. Noble, D., Gregory, R.D., Field, R., Marchant, J.H., Raven, M. & Gibbons, D.W. (2002) Production of regional indicators for wild bird populations. BTO & RSPB, Thetford & Sandy. |
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