Forest of Bowland

Forest of Bowland
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Working with farmers

Volunteer & Farmer Alliance: Brian Matthews (farmer) & David McReedy (volunteer)

Gavin Thomas is the RSPB's Bowland Wader Project officer. His work is a key element of the Birds of Bowland Project and is supported by a number of partners including Lancashire Rural Futures, the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Lancashire Countryside Service, United Utilities and Ribble Valley Borough Council. 

Much of Gavin's work involves encouraging farmers and landowners to adopt land management that benefits breeding lapwings, curlews, snipe and redshanks. He offers free advice tailored to each individual farm and will advise on and undertake applications on behalf of farmers for Natural England's Environmental Stewardship Schemes.

The unimproved upland farmland in Bowland are ideal habitats for waders

The farmers get a vital source of income and the birds benefit from improvements to their habitat through sympathetic land management and creation of vital shallow muddy feeding areas like wader scrapes and shallow edged ditches.

The unimproved upland farmland in Bowland, particularly the rough grazing pastures and boggy fields on the moorland fringe, are ideal habitats for waders. Farmers and landowners that farm these areas have been contacted by the Wader Project and many have taken up the offer of free advice.

Gavin surveys their farms and writes a detailed report that is also summarised into a one page 'management calendar' that the farmer can put on his wall and refer to on a regular basis. It contains everything the farmer needs to know on when and how to best manage the land for wading birds. Many of the project's farmers are already benefiting from annual payments secured from the stewardship schemes to help manage their land for the waders.  

On the farmland alone, Bowland supports nationally important populations of approximately 2500 pairs of lapwing, 2850 pairs of curlew (over 3 per cent of the total UK population) and several hundred pairs of snipe and redshank. All these species are in decline nationally but thanks to the Wader Project and its partners and sympathetic farming practices adopted by local farmers, Bowland still has areas that support healthy populations of these species.

Last modified: 17 April 2008

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