The UK could lose its first bird species because of climate change, a charity has warned. Dotterel have plunged by almost 90% since monitoring began in 1988, the RSPB said. Dr Leah Kelly, RSPB conservation scientist and one of key scientists on the project, said: “Dotterel are in steep decline, and we are seeing them disappearing before our very eyes.
“The fact they need mountain tops to breed has made them particularly susceptible to habitat loss as climate change alters their montane environment”. Montane habitats are particularly vulnerable to climate change, with hotter and drier conditions pushing specialist montane species like Dotterel to higher and higher altitudes until they have nowhere left to go.
The charity said its survey may be the first time the UK has documented a species being driven toward extinction locally by a changing climate.
Unlike most birds, male Dotterel stay with the nest and incubate the eggs while females move on, therefore sightings of male Dotterel were used to estimate breeding population size.
To help surveyors find breeding males, they looked and listened out for anxiety calls, agitated behaviour, and distraction displays, which suggest nesting nearby.
Results of the survey revealed only 22 (10%) of the 217 sites studied contained any breeding male Dotterel.
No breeding Dotterel were detected in England, Wales or southern Scotland.
Across the surveyed areas, only 33 males were recorded, which extrapolates to an estimated total UK population of 112 breeding males.
The RSPB said this decline of 89% since 1987/88 showed an acceleration in losses since the 2011 survey, with evidence of decline in previously stable areas such as the Cairngorms.
It comes as a small tree only found in Bristol is critically endangered because of railway works and an unknown pathogen.
The rare Wilmott’s whitebeam, located in the river valley of Avon Gorge, was moved from endangered in the latest red list of threatened species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
It has now been reduced to fewer than 50 individuals in the wild.
Emily Beech, head of conservation prioritisation at Botanic Gardens Conservation
International, said: “This IUCN update includes reassessments of 40 species of rowan, whitebeam and service trees only found in the UK and Ireland. 95% of these species remain threatened, and one species Wilmott’s whitebeam (Sorbus wilmottiana), found only in the Avon Gorge, has been uplisted from Endangered to Critically Endangered because of railway works and an unknown pathogen.
“Reassessments are vital for monitoring changes to give us the opportunity to prevent species from going extinct.”
