Stop clearing out messy brambles to bring Britain’s rarest bird 'back from the brink', councils told
Stop clearing out 'messy' brambles and shrubs to bring Britain's rarest bird back from the brink, councils are to be told.
The willow tit is the fastest-declining resident bird in the country, and one of the lowest in number, and the numbers have been in sharp freefall because their preferred habitat, shrubland, has been destroyed because of an obsession with neatness.
The government has earmarked the tiny bird as one of 100 priority species whose habitat needs to be regenerated as soon as possible.
The Willow Tit has declined 94 per cent between 1970 and 2012 as a result of habitat loss. They depend on messy areas of damp thorny scrub and rotting deadwood, which are often cleared in favour of “neater” habitats.
A new project from wildlife organisations including the RSPB and the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust has found that the birds need around seven times the habitat as previously thought and that while before it was believed they thrived in damp woodland, Willow Tits far prefer brambles and bushes.
Rangers discovered this by fitting the 11cm birds with tiny trackers that traced where they flew and nested. They also found that while some birds can be helped by nature-loving gardeners, Willow Tits mainly use natural areas of the landscape and very rarely use gardens or features of the built-up environment.
The Yorkshire Wildlife Trust has called for councils to create joined-up bramble habitat to save the little bird. Species such as bramble, hawthorn, blackthorn and birch are consistent features and deadwood availability for nesting and damp patches are important contributing features of good Willow Tit habitat.
A spokesperson said: "Creation and maintenance of linear habitat connecting the landscape is crucial for their survival, and this is now backed-up by scientific evidence which was largely absent prior to this project. It gives us the tools and knowledge to work across organisations to improve large-scale areas for nature and our most threatened species."
Government quango Natural England is also planning to compel local authorities to create more 'untidy' habitats for creatures including the Willow tit.
Natural England Chair Tony Juniper said: “It is vitally important that we move beyond strictly conserving what is left and press forward with a major programme of nature recovery – building on the successes of the Back from the Brink project.
“Natural England’s work with a range of conservation organisations is aiming to put more than 100 priority species on the road to recovery.
“But central to the recovery of creatures such as the Willow Tit will be the protection and restoration of large areas of suitable habitat, including through the creation of a vibrant and wildlife-rich Nature Recovery Network, enabling populations of rare animals to increase and be reconnected with one another.”
The government is currently launching the Nature Recovery Network; while many previous conservation projects focused on creating protected nature reserves for threatened species, this new initiative will attempt to make good habitats across the UK including in urban areas.
Natural England plans to create or restore 500,000 hectares of wildlife habitat outside protected sites, more effectively linking existing protected sites and landscapes, as well as urban green infrastructure (such as trees, hedgerows, parks, fields, forests) and urban blue infrastructure (such as rainwater tanks, bioswales, rivers, canals, ponds, wetlands, and floodplains).
