How to Give Lapwings a Chance

We need your input to help protect our most iconic birds

Many eminent people have underlined the need for Ground Cry. They have pledged their support behind the scenes – adding that, until they are fully retired, they cannot afford to be seen to be overtly supporting 'heretical' positions on issues such as predator control, much as they agree with Ground Cry’s viewpoint. The tentacles of the client state reach far and wide and entrench woke ecology very deeply.

This stranglehold was further illustrated to me this week when I managed to sell the idea for a stage play to a theatrical producer. It is a satire of wokery in the countryside. He likes my synopsis and is paying me to finish writing the script, but he shocked me by saying, "Of course we won’t be able to put it on in any theatre that receives Arts Council funding. It’s far too politically incorrect."

There is a big mountain to climb or, actually, a Berlin Wall to cross.

So we have the vehicle, we now need to agree what we want it to do.

And that’s where the think-tanky bit comes in. This is an attempt to harness the collective brainpower of the Scribehound community to change things for the better.

Given that, at Westminster anyway, we are about halfway through the electoral cycle, with a recent reboot (or retread?) of the Labour government, party policies are up for grabs and it seems sensible to develop a manifesto for ground-nesting birds.

Here are some of our draft objectives:

• Winning the argument about the need to rebalance the ecosystem by reducing the populations of certain key predators back to the natural levels experienced in normally functioning ecosystems with apex predators, such as in Eastern Europe.

• Given the political difficulties with lethal control, investigation of sterilisation programmes (such as the successful one for feral cats) or contraception (such as is being developed for grey squirrels) or the use of pioneering Gene Drive technology. See the article I wrote for Scribehound on this

• Protecting important habitats for ground-nesting birds and avoiding their loss to wildfires, afforestation or reversion to thick scrub through extreme re-wilding policies.

• A practical approach to intervention to manage certain species, such as making it less bureaucratic to reintroduce black grouse to some areas. Or reintroducing the hen harrier brood management scheme.

• An urgent review of the protection of certain predator species, such as gulls. And a more pragmatic approach to licensing.

• Ensuring that taxpayers' money is well spent and delivers as many ground-nesting bangs-for-bucks as possible. This means greater transparency and accountability for NGOs and other landowners in receipt of public money.

Many of you are practical conservationists and, no doubt, have your own wish-lists based on your own experiences and local conditions. Please let us have your thoughts, briefly in the comments section below or, in more detail, by email to info@groundcry.com.

Of course, lobbying politicians is one thing. Getting results is another. That means winning arguments and changing public opinion before MPs are likely to take notice. Therefore, Ground Cry will focus on a PR campaign to do just that.

And regenerating ground-nesting bird populations isn’t just about changing laws to tackle the big things, such as, for example, the predator imbalance. It’s also about encouraging farmers, shoot managers, even golf course secretaries to manage their activities better. Please give us any ideas you may have.

Some of the ideas we have had include:

• Developing farm audits that include identifying suitable ground-nesting habitats.

• Developing ways for farmers to meet their winter forage needs to allow for successful nesting in hay or silage fields. These might include finding funding to make up the nutritional deficit caused by cutting later.

• Developing systems to ensure that hay and silage fields are always cut in a way that maximises chick survival.

• Working with the GWCT and others to minimise the impact of releasing game birds on wild ground-nesting bird populations. Encouraging, for example, the removal of road-kill from roads to reduce carrion stocks to avoid a build-up of kites, corvids and other predators.

• Encouraging golf courses to manage the rough in such a way that larks and other GNBs can prosper.

• In time, it may be possible to develop a branded Ground Cry accreditation scheme for a number of different industries.

Underpinning everything is ‘the science’. That’s an increasingly slippery commodity these days. So often it ends up saying what those who have commissioned it want it to say, in true Sir Humphrey fashion. But, rightly, nothing gets changed without evidence. Is the evidence base sufficient, or are there gaps we would like to see filled?

It is all very well to say, for example: 'In these areas badgers are now the biggest threat to ground-nesting birds'. Without proper research, it will be hard to call for a reduction in the badger population in the face of furious opposition from the animal rights lobby.

Inexcusably, a huge opportunity was missed when there were badger culls ordered by DEFRA to combat TB. You would think that ministers and civil servants would have welcomed the chance to test the hypothesis that badgers destroy the nests of ground-nesting birds but it seems not. As many of us were urging them to do it at the time, it appears that they may have gone out of their way to avoid doing so.

Is there, perhaps, a way of turning into science the powerful anecdotal evidence that biodiversity has increased in areas where there have been badger culls? And surely we could establish the correlation between islands – either real, separated by sea or, de facto, artificially separated by a badger-proof fence – and breeding success of GNBs in the absence of badgers and other predators.

Those of us at the muddy end of the spectrum have the advantage of carrying out scientific experiments every day, even though we might not think of them as such. We hope to forge strong links with wader groups and grey partridge projects. Could there perhaps be a way of harnessing all the monitoring that goes on so that it can be turned into rigorous citizen science with empirical data backed up by trailcam evidence?

And would it be helpful for land managers to be able to go on the Ground Cry website and see up-to-date reports on nesting progress across the country? I know I would find it useful to know each spring when anyone a similar latitude to my farm had identified their first lapwing or skykark nests, so that I could better plan my field operations.

I could go on and on. Readers, it’s over to you now. Please let us know what you think.

I would like to conclude with a plea for volunteers to help us translate all this into action.

We have so far managed with volunteers but we will, at some point, need to spend some money. If anyone would like to be a Ground Cry fundraiser, please step forward.

Secondly, we want to build up a large archive of photographs and video footage to able to push out high quality social media posts. Everyone is a photographer these days.

Please send us material to info@groundcry.com ensuring that you let us know about any credits that need to be given and granting copyright permissions where appropriate.

Thirdly, if anyone wants to do some research – perhaps because they need to do a PhD or a dissertation – please let us know. We may be able to help find a project that will help ground-nesting birds.

Many of you have welcomed Ground Cry as vital work. Whether it succeeds or not will depend on whether people support it. We will only get out of it what everyone is prepared to put into it. What we hope we will get is a trusted new voice for birds.