In this study, BTO scientists mapped large fires that occurred over a 19-year period in Polesia, a region containing some of Europe’s last pristine peatlands and lowland forests in Eastern Europe. Fires are of great concern to policymakers in the region due to the economic and health costs, and a lot of resources are used to suppress fires during hot and dry years. There are potentially natural solutions to fires, however, that could also benefit birds, biodiversity and climate issues. These ‘nature-based’ solutions include restoring drained wetlands. In this study, freely-available satellite data were used to explore the prevalence of large fires and the factors causing them. This allowed researchers to explore whether restoring the landscape’s wetlands could reduce the increasing risk of large, damaging fires as the climate changes.

Waterbirds in the UK presents the results of the annual Wetland Bird Survey Report. It provides a single, comprehensive source of information on the current status and distribution of waterbirds in the UK for those interested in the conservation of the populations of these species and the wetland sites they use.

This report explores the impact on the direction and statistical confidence in the individual species trends from which the wild bird indicator is composed when including missing years in the dataset, using simulated subsets of real data from previous years. This report was prompted by the impacts of Covid-19 lockdown restrictions on survey effort.