Curlew Conservation: An Overview

Mary Colwell (Curlew Action) outlines the challenges facing UK Curlews and practical solutions for recovery .

Curlews are among the UK’s most recognisable and well-loved birds, but sadly their numbers are falling fast. The main problem is that too few chicks are making it to adulthood – but the reasons behind that are complex. As ground-nesting birds, Curlews are especially vulnerable to the changing pressures shaping our countryside today, including intensive farming, predation, habitat loss and climate change.

In this introductory webinar, Mary Colwell (Curlew Action) explores why Curlews are in trouble, what their decline tells us about the wider state of our countryside, and how practical, evidence-led conservation can help secure these iconic birds their future.

Mary will cover the following challenges that face Curlews:

• Why Curlews Are Declining: An overview of Curlew ecology and why poor breeding success lies at the heart of their decline, with insight into the pressures facing nests and chicks on the ground.
• Agriculture: Since WW2, the intensification of farming practices has created unsustainable pressures on ground-nesting birds. We'll investigate how practices such as frequent silage cutting, over-stocking, drainage and the spread of monocultures are contributing to curlew declines.
• Predation: We'll look at how young Curlews are easy prey, and how the UK has some of the highest densities of generalist predators, such as foxes and cows, in Europe.
• Forestry: Forestry, especially plantations, are not always compatible with breeding Curlews, which need big, open spaces free of predators. Mary will discuss how trees close in the landscape, remove nesting habitat and can also provide shelter for a variety of predators such as badgers, foxes and crows.
• Habitat Loss and Fragmentation: In a small, crowded country, land is pulled in many directions: housing, roads and infrastructure, recreational access, dog walking, and large-scale renewable energy developments all compete for space with Curlews.
• Climate Change: Climate instability is not a distant threat; it is already compounding the challenges Curlews face on the ground through flooding, drought, extreme temperatures and seasonal disruption.

This free webinar is aimed at anyone with an interest in Curlews or conservation in general and will provide a clear, balanced overview of the challenges and practical solutions involved in Curlew conservation. We welcome students, naturalists, ornithologists, conservation professionals, ecologists, land managers, farmers and anyone else who is keen to understand the threats facing our Curlews.

The 60-minute event will consist of a presentation followed by a live Q&A with the tutor, using questions submitted by the audience.

This event is a one-off and will not be repeated. But if you can't attend the live event, you don't need to miss out. Book a space and once we've processed the event content after the live event you will be sent a link to the content online.

Mary Colwell is an award-winning author, producer and campaigner for nature. Her articles have appeared in the Guardian, BBC Wildlife Magazine, The Tablet, Country Life and many other publications. She has made documentaries for the BBC Natural History Unit in both TV and radio, and has published three books: John Muir – the Scotsman Who Saved America’s Wild Places, Curlew Moon and Beak Tooth and Claw. Her fourth book, The Gathering Place, was published by Bloomsbury in 2023 and was shortlisted on the Stanford’s best travel book of 2024.

In 2009 she won a Sony Radio Academy Gold award and in October 2017 she was awarded the Dilys Breese Medal by the BTO for outstanding science communication, in 2018, the David Bellamy Award from the Gamekeepers Association for her conservation work on curlews and in 2019, the WWT Marsh Award for Conservation.

In March 2021 she was appointed Chair of the government-supported Curlew Recovery Partnership England, a roundtable of organisations charged with restoring Curlews, their habitats and associated wildlife across England. In 2020 she set up the charity, Curlew Action. She spearheaded the successful campaign to establish a GCSE in Natural History, announced by the government in April 2023.

This webinar is part of the Curlew Action webinar series delivered in partnership with Curlew Action.

The 2026 programme consists of our free Curlew Conservation webinars (more topics coming soon):

1. Curlew Conservation: An Overview (13 Apr 2026)
2. Curlew Conversations: Conservation (11 May 2026)

In 2025, we delivered the European Curlew Headstarting Online Workshop. Catch up with all the presentations via our website:

1. An Overview of Headstarting Curlews
2. Curlew Headstarting Projects: Europe
3. Curlew Headstarting Projects: England
4. Curlew Headstarting: Eggs, Incubation and Hatching
5. Curlew Headstarting: Rearing Chicks
6. Curlew Headstarting: Health & Disease
7. Curlew Headstarting: Releasing Birds
8. Curlew Headstarting: Post-release Monitoring