Record success for breeding Curlews in Northern Ireland

We’re delighted to announce a record year for breeding Curlews in Northern Ireland. Once facing the threat of extinction, these wading birds are now on the path to recovery, thanks to the work of dedicated RSPB NI staff and local farmers, working in partnership through the Curlew LIFE project.   

Curlews are charismatic wading birds, with long curved bills and a haunting bubbling call. Typically, they breed in upland habitats, particularly moorlands, rough grasslands and bogs, with the UK hosting around a quarter of the world’s breeding Curlews.  

But they are in steep decline. Since the mid-1990s, we’ve lost nearly half (48%) of our breeding Curlews from the UK.  In Northern Ireland, Curlews declined by 82% since 1987, to an estimated 150 breeding pairs, and are now of high conservation concern.  

Thanks to funding from the EU LIFE programme and other partners, RSPB Northern Ireland launched the Curlew in Crisis Project. This focused on using best practice conservation techniques to provide Curlews with better breeding conditions, including restoring and improving habitat, monitoring and predation control, and work with local famers, landowners and the wider community.  

This year we’ve seen the best results yet. In County Antrim, monitoring saw the number of pairs increase from 37 in 2023 to an incredible 52 pairs in 2024.  

Highlighting the impact of this remarkable achievement, RSPB NI’s Conservation Officer for the Antrim Plateau Katie Gibb said: “Over the course of the Curlew LIFE project, we’ve seen 202 chicks fledge, some of which have already started to return to the breeding population, resulting in a 40% increase in pairs in just one year. This is an incredible improvement compared to the 116 fledglings recorded between 2011 and 2020. It gives us real hope, allowing us to shift our focus from preventing extinction to managing a recovering population.” 

On the Lower Lough Erne RSPB reserve, the project reported 43 pairs of Curlew breeding, with 20 chicks fledging. This is an amazing achievement on 200 hectares of lowland wet grassland. To put that into perspective, they have achieved the highest density of breeding Curlew anywhere in Northern Ireland.   

As well as helping Curlews, the work will also benefit other wildlife. In Lough Erne, for example, it is hoped that work to improve the habitat will lead to increased breeding success among other wading birds such as Lapwings, Snipe and Redshanks.   

With the latest results outperforming previous years, it’s great to see that RSPB NI is a step closer to turning back time on Curlew populations and addressing biodiversity loss.  

It is incredibly difficult to halt the decline of any species, especially those dependent on a variety of habitat measures in areas free from disturbance. These hard-won successes seen in the core areas in Northern Ireland are a positive example of what can be achieved with the right measures in place for a species.  

However, we still have a long way to go to return Curlew numbers to the figures seen even in the 1980s. We have largely lost Curlews from the wider countryside across Northern Ireland, but the progress with Curlew LIFE in these core areas shows how we can start to recover a species with the right funding, targeted conservation action and a strong partnership with local farmers and communities. 

Join Conservation Officer Katie Gibb for a personal account of how the team and local farmers are bringing Curlews back from the brink on the grasslands of Glenwherry on the Antrim Plateau.  

Watch the film

Curlew LIFE is a four-year conservation project that was launched in 2020 to tackle the decline in Curlews, with projects in Antrim Plateau (Glenwherry) and Lough Erne in Fermanagh in Northern Ireland. There are also Curlew LIFE projects in Ysbyty Ifan and Hiraethog in north Wales, RSPB Geltsdale in Cumbria plus a large area of farmland stretching along Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland, and RSPB Insh Marshes in northern Scotland. 

The project has delivered on the ground conservation at the sites, including a wide range of habitat improvements, from rewetting and removal of ill-sited conifer plantations and scrub, through to predator fencing. Additionally, radio tagging has been used to better understand how Curlews use the landscape and this has guided habitat improvements. 

It has also brought together experts from across the UK to create a UK-wide species action plan for Curlews, and has engaged farmers, landowners and volunteers, inspiring communities to care about their Curlews and giving them the knowledge to do so.  

The Curlew LIFE project has been a collaborative effort, managed by the RSPB with funding from the EU LIFE programme and several project partners, including Cairngorms Connect, Fellfoot Forward Landscape Partnership Scheme, Natural Resources Wales, and NIEA-DAERA.The Heritage Fund has also played a vital role in acquiring key sites in Northern Ireland for the project, ensuring the long-term success of conservation efforts.