The conservationist's dilemma - 6

The work aims to make the bog wetter again, blocking the gullies and re-vegetating the bare peat by planting Sphagnum Mosses. It’s back-breaking work and the brilliant site team could not do it without the help of local volunteers.

Healthy peat bogs lock in large amounts of carbon, which is crucial in reducing the effects of climate change. They also improve drinking water quality by reducing the amount of peat being washed down into the reservoirs below.

The peat bog environment also benefits breeding waders such as Curlews, Golden Plovers, and Dunlins. Numbers of these species have rocketed at Dove Stone, and these increases have all been a result of the habitat restoration work. Given the geography of the area, pressure on breeding waders from predation has not been an issue and the RSPB hasn't needed to resort to any on-site predator control. Wader numbers could have been increased quickly by doing so, but the RSPB chose to do the more difficult job of wider restoration. This has also brought far wider benefits for both nature and people.

However, not all places are like Dove Stone and the RSPB looks at sites on a case by case basis. Whilst non-lethal methods of predator control are always preferred, it is not always practical.

The RSPB only carries out lethal vertebrate control on its nature reserves when four criteria are met:

• That the seriousness of the problem has been established;
• That non-lethal measures have been assessed and found not to be practicable;
• That killing is an effective way of addressing the problem;
• That killing will not have an adverse impact on the conservation status of the target or other non-target species.

Only when the RSPB is satsified with regard to all of these things, does it make a decision. When reviewed by the RSPB's trustees, their support for the existing policy and practices was confirmed.

Organisations like the RSPB must resort to lethal control to keep numbers of predators from impacting species of conservation concern. Yet one of the reasons for the large numbers of these predators may be the more than 40 million gamebirds that are released each year into the countryside.

Many land managers report that they need to do more predator control, when their own game management practices may be the cause of some of the need.

The RSPB completed a review of the impact of predation on wild birds, based on 81 relevant scientific papers and reports covering 908 cases where the effect of a predator on changes in the numbers of a prey species had been measured. This showed that:

• Predator numbers have increased in the UK;
• That the UK has very high densities of Red Foxes and crows compared to other European countries;
• That seabirds, waders and gamebirds are limited by predation
• That pigeons,birds of prey, owls, woodpeckers and songbirds are not limited by predation; and that there is a real need for research to understand how landscape-scale management could be used to provide longer-term sustainable solutions to reduce the numbers of generalist predators and their impacts on species of conservation concern.

We plan to do more work on this.

Yet, recognising that this debate is deeply polarised, with strong views held on all sides, the RSPB will continue to input and engage constructively, based on the best available evidence.