Explainer

“I’ve got a cunning plan!” Why planning is key to species recovery

To help migratory birds recover, we often need different conservation actions in different places, cutting across borders. Here’s why action plans matter.

There are points in history that we look back upon and realise that these changed the course of humanity. Speeches, events, sometimes births, sometimes deaths. It’s the same in wildlife conservation – key points in time that turn around the fortunes of a species, a nature reserve or an ecosystem.

I have worked in bird conservation for more than 25 years and have grown to realise that one of the most influential elements of achieving a conservation ‘win’ is having a good plan, and the creation of that plan can be that pivotal moment in conservation history.

Conservation planning is fundamental to much of what the RSPB does, and to many of its successes. Nature reserve management plans steer us to make the very best of the fabulous network of wildlife-rich reserves we are blessed with today.

Guy (left) with Dr Sayam Chowdhury (University of Cambridge and Spoon-billed Sandpiper Task Force), co-author of their new international action plan — Guy (left)

Eyes on the prize

Species conservation needs good planning too – not least because saving a species is a long game. Working out why a species is in trouble, designing and testing conservation solutions, and then getting those delivered on a scale big enough to see the population recover, all takes time – usually multiple decades. A good plan keeps everyone on track down this long road, focussed on the most important actions, and avoiding diversions down dead-end side tracks.

Writing a plan – often a rather technical, dense, and long document – might not seem the sexiest thing a species conservationist could ever do. Seeing the first pair of rare species nesting on your nature reserve, getting the law changed to protect a key habitat for the species, or releasing the first individuals for a reintroduction project – this is what quickens the pulse and attracts the attention. But much of sexy stuff only happens because a good plan says it should happen and drives all the work that leads up to it happening.

Winning hearts and minds

Good species conservation action plans prioritise the most important actions, and cite the evidence that demonstrates why these are the most important actions. The process by which they are constructed is almost as important as the end product – consult with all the right stakeholders; bring them on board to get shared agreement on the plan’s recommendations and priorities, and the journey down the road to species recovery will likely be a lot smoother and faster.

Yes, this will inevitably involve compromise and some stakeholders, including us, might find we need to leave some ideals at the door, for the sake of pragmatism, in order to make real progress. Effective conversation always requires changing people’s minds and actions. Effective species conservation, and planning, is as much about people as it is the species.

Operation Turtle Dove team at Groundswell Regenerative Agriculture Festival. — Members of the Operation Turtle Dove team

A global plan for globe-trotting birds

Migratory birds especially need good conservation plans. Crossing borders and continents multiplies the potential threats these birds face and multiplies the number of stakeholders who need to be convinced that change is necessary, if species recovery is to be achieved.

Their action plans need to be at an international level – bringing countries, and often continents, together. Without an agreed shared plan at this scale, it’s all too easy for one group of people with vested interest in one place to blame others elsewhere for a species’ plight, and use this as an excuse for inaction.

Action Plans in action: Turtle Dove

Turtle Doves are a great example. The RSPB led the production of the first international species action plan for Turtle Doves; published in 2018.

This pulled together all the available evidence demonstrating what had driven the decline of this much-loved migratory bird and set out what actions were needed to reverse the trend.

Up to this point some blamed late 20th century agricultural intensification for removing Turtle Doves’ seed food from farmed landscapes, whilst others blamed hunters in continental Europe for shooting too many doves. We frequently heard voices from one group blaming the other. The reality – made clear by the action plan – was that this blame game was unhelpful. Both impacts needed to be dealt with simultaneously to save Turtle Doves; it was not one or the other.

As a direct result of this action plan, excellent progress is now being made with Turtle Doves in Western Europe, and the population at this scale has been recovering strongly since 2021. There is still some way to go for Turtle Doves across all of Europe for sure, but their future is now so much more positive than it looked ten years ago, when any meaningful recovery was considered almost impossible by some. This pessimism would likely have been the reality too, without the influential action plan.

New ambitions

So, the recent launch of new international species conservation action plans for two more of the RSPB’s most threatened migratory priority species – Steppe Eagles and Spoon-billed Sandpipers – is to be hugely welcomed. Very different birds, in different flyways, facing different threats and pressures, but both desperately in need of coordinated conservation action across many countries.

Steppe Eagle

As its name suggests, Steppe Eagle breeds in grasslands across Central Asia, including Kazakhstan, where the RSPB has long been involved in supporting very large scale steppe conservation programmes.

When not breeding, Steppe Eagle migrate to spend the rest of the year in Eastern Africa, Arabia or South Asia. There and on route, they face threats including from energy structures (collision and electrocution), deliberate and accidental killing, and habitat degradation, with our understanding hampered by a whole load of knowledge gaps. It was once considered the world’s most common large bird of prey, but its numbers have dwindled and it is now classed as globally Endangered.

The new RSPB-led 10-year Global Action Plan for Steppe Eagle was launched this spring, being officially ‘adopted’ at the Convention of the Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) in Brazil in March. It aims to fill all the main knowledge gaps and address all the main known threats throughout the global range of this impressive raptor, and keystone species, working towards restoring it as a common sight in steppe skies.

Spoon-billed Sandpiper

Spoon-billed Sandpiper couldn’t be more different. Nesting on bleak tundra in far north-eastern Russia, these sparrow-sized waders migrate down the east coast of Asia to winter on muddy coasts from southern China to Bangladesh.

Sadly ‘Spoonies’ are now one of the world’s rarest shorebirds, and holder of the most serious of the global threat categories: Critically Endangered.

Concern for their falling numbers was first raised 20 years ago, and in 2010 the RSPB joined an international effort to save this bird from what looked like certain extinction. A first international species conservation action plan was produced in the same year.

The work that followed it had significant successes. Efforts to address known threats such as hunting pressure on wintering grounds and habitat loss on migration sites were successful and the rate of population decline slowed.

Conservation breeding bought us more time to find and address threats. Through investment in monitoring and science we also know much more about the species, its ecology, migratory behaviour and flyway than we did 20 years ago. But we also know – from RSPB-led science – that numbers are still dropping, and a new revised action plan was badly needed.

Thankfully, with support and assistance from the RSPB and many others, a new and very welcome 10-year plan was published recently by the Spoon-billed Sandpiper Task Force.

Not a moment too soon either; there are only a few hundred birds left in the global population now. If you were to put all the world’s breeding adult Spoonies onto a set of scales together, they would now weigh no more than a single Mute Swan.

So, the action plan needs to galvanise rapid, coordinated action to identify and then tackle the remaining drivers of decline, if we are to hang on to this wonderful and unique little wader.

Spoon-billed Sandpiper, adult female in summer plumage on breeding grounds, Chukokta, Russia — Spoon-billed Sandpiper

The foundation of our species conservation work

The RSPB uses action planning as the foundation of all our species conservation work. As well as engaging with international, multi-partner, species conservation action plans whenever we have the chance, we also engage at other scales too. Take for example the recently-launched UK Action Plan for Curlew which sets out the clear actions needed to save Curlews and is the result of a collaborative effort of NGOs, farmers, land managers, government agencies and scientists.

In addition, each of our own 100 priority species has its own plan that prioritises what actions RSPB could, and should, take that would make the biggest contribution towards improving their prospects. These plans are dynamic; regularly reviewed and revised if necessary as we learn from experience or as new evidence comes to light. Some of the most ambitious of these plans, reflecting the complexities and imperatives described above, relate to migratory birds.

At all levels, our incredible globe-spanning migratory birds need Migratory birds need conservation action plans that are as cunning as possible.