Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, Natural England and Beaulieu Estate aiming to protect wading birds with new Gravelly Shores project
The New Forest’s threatened wading birds are at the centre of the new conservation project to boost numbers.
The Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust’s (GWCT) new Gravelly Shores project also aims to encourage terns to return to a historically important breeding site at Beaulieu.
The project will see the creation of a new protected, coastal vegetated shingle habitat on the Beaulieu Estate, which is already home to around half of the Solent’s breeding population of ringed plovers and is an important site for breeding oystercatchers.
It is hoped the new shingle habitat, covering about 1.7 hectares, will also encourage common, little and roseate terns – which no longer breed here – to return to what was one of the country’s most important breeding sites for the species.
GWCT’s Mike Short, who will lead the two-year project, said: “Whilst it is right that habitat loss and disturbance can put immense pressure on nesting birds, so can high levels of predation.
“Using nest cameras, we have previously documented very high losses of ringed plover and oystercatcher clutches to foxes, crows and gulls.
“Aside from creating a new nesting habitat that’s resilient to climate change and coastal erosion, this exciting project will enable us to evaluate nest protection cages and other management tools to aid breeding wader recovery across the reserve and wider Solent region.”
The ringed plover is a high conservation priority red-listed species, reflecting steep national declines in their wintering and breeding populations.
Within the Solent region, increased human pressure and disturbance has reduced the amount of suitable shingle nesting habitat for shorebirds, and where it occurs it is affected by coastal erosion and sea level rise.
The new shingle area at Beaulieu will be created above the high water mark on a site with restricted access, and nesting birds will be protected by an electric fence to help deter predators.
The project team will also trial other non-lethal predation management techniques across the North Solent National Nature Reserve, to reduce losses of wader nests and chicks to predators.
The study team will assess how effective the combined habitat and predation management measures are in helping local coastal bird populations to recover.
Gravelly Shores is a partnership between GWCT, Natural England and the Beaulieu Estate, funded by Natural England’s Species Recovery Programme Capital Grant Scheme.
