Conservation

Bird Conservation Targeting Project
Home > Our work > Conservation > Projects > Bird Conservation Targeting Project

The Bird Conservation Targeting Project

Male whinchat on dung-heap
Whinchats are among the birds to be helped by this project

The Bird Conservation Targeting Project has been developed to target management and resources towards important sites for scarce and declining farmland and woodland birds. Records are are brought together from a wide range of sources, including individual birdwatchers, county bird clubs and national surveys.

The project produces distribution maps which are already being used to guide the spend of hundreds of millions of pounds to benefit birds through agri-environment and woodland grant schemes, and influencing woodland management to benefit birds on publicly owned woodland. The targeting maps help to ensure that government grant schemes are allocated to put the right conservation measures in the right places.

We are collating bird records to target conservation action in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland Over a million records have already been collated, and the project needs to continue to receive new records so that the targeting maps remain up-to-date.

We are grateful to all those who have contributed bird records to this project. If you are a birdwatcher and would like to help, then please visit the 'make your bird records count' pages for more details.

Maps

You can have a look at the targeting maps for England, Wales and Northern Ireland by clicking on the link on the left-hand side of this page. Scottish targeting maps will be available early next year.

Use these maps to discover the locations of scarce and declining farmland and woodland birds in your area and, if you are a landowner or advisor, you can make use of the advice on how best to manage your land for the benefit of these species.

The species assemblage maps allow you to view hotspots where there are several species with similar habitat requirements.

There are national overview maps, and for a more detailed view, you can select maps by region and by species.

Project partners

The Bird Conservation Targeting Project is supported by a partnership between the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), the Centre for Environmental Data and Recording (CEDaR), the Countryside Council for Wales (CCW), the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD), the Environment and Heritage Service (EHS), Forestry Commission England (FCE), Forestry Commission Wales (FCW), Forest Service (FS), Natural England (NE), the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH).

Last modified: 26 October 2007

Downloads

Species list (67Kb)
A list of the species which the Bird Conservation Targeting Project is aiming to help.
Organisations contributing to the Bird Conservation Targeting Project (28Kb)
October 2008 newsletter (366Kb)
The Bird Conservation Targeting Project's October 2008 newsletter