Positive responses of breeding waders to targeted conservation advice and habitat management used to enhance existing wader conservation initiatives in Northern Ireland

Ground-nesting birds such as breeding waders are of high conservation concern throughout Europe, experiencing population declines driven by agricultural intensification and low breeding success often caused by predation. One mechanism for encouraging wader recovery outside of nature reserves is Agri-Environment Schemes (AES), where financial incentives encourage farmers to improve their land management practices to promote wildlife and ecosystem services. The effectiveness of such schemes for waders outside of nature reserves is limited however. Methods for improving delivery of conservation action in the wider countryside are therefore urgently needed. Here we evaluate the effectiveness of the Halting Environmental Loss Project (HELP), where site-specific advice, training and practical assistance in conducting breeding wader habitat management were provided at a range of upland and lowland sites across Northern Ireland. HELP did not provide direct financial incentives to landowners, instead, targeted advice and access to specialist machinery and expertise were provided to stimulate habitat management interventions and enhance existing wader conservation measures (AES or reserve funding). Benefits were observed both on and off reserves, although the quality and extent of the habitat management undertaken was generally higher on reserves. Temporal trends in breeding densities were more positive for three wader species during HELP than previously and continued to be positive for a fourth species. Our results demonstrate that targeted advice and practical assistance can lead to improvements in habitat management and subsequent increases in wader breeding densities inside and outside nature reserves. Future wader conservation projects are likely to be most effective when expert advice is deployed in combination with other mechanisms to fund management such as nature reserves or AES payments, and in many situations reductions in predation pressure will also be needed.