In this 'practitioner's perspective', BTO joins other organisations to consider how to tighten the frameworks used for conservation to improve outcomes.

There was a significant survey effort by volunteers, NGOs and NIEA around Northern Ireland’s coastline for the last year of the Seabirds Count census period, finding that fortunes were mixed for the 20 breeding species of seabird in Northern Ireland. Fulmars continue to decline across most sites, while large gulls buck the national trends and are increasing across Northern Ireland. A team from NIEA found that Fulmar had declined at Downhill (-86%) and Binevenagh (-95%) between the Seabird 2000 census (1998-2002) and the Seabirds Count census (2015-2021), while volunteer-led monitoring of the scattered numbers along the east Co. Antrim coast showed numbers had declined by 73%. However, a rare survey visit to The Skerries by volunteers showed that numbers of Fulmar here had risen by 54% to 43 Apparently Occupied Sites. Large gulls have been increasing at most sites around Northern Ireland, with particularly good annual data collected by the National Trust for Strangford Lough. In 2021, the numbers of Great Black-backed Gulls in the lough were at their highest since 1972, with 143 nests recorded. Black Guillemots are a favourite of seabird monitoring volunteers in Northern Ireland, and we closed the census period with an incredible 80% of sites in NI covered for this species, with those sites left un-surveyed very unlikely to contain Black Guillemots. In 2021, a total of 718 Black Guillemots were counted around the coasts, with concentrations particularly high at The Maidens (60 individuals), Bangor (75 individuals), Lighthouse Island (60 individuals) and at Annalong Harbour (58 individuals). A volunteer-led productivity study found that their breeding success at Annalong was 0.5 chicks fledged per nest.

Climate change ‘adaptations’ describe any actions which address the impacts of our changing climate. These adaptations can be focussed on human populations and infrastructure, with measures such as flood defence or the development of drought-tolerant crops, or on the natural environment, through special management of habitats and species. The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, which was published this week, emphasises the growing need to consider how we should adapt to climate change, but there has been virtually no evaluation of adaptation measures for the natural environment. A new collaborative publication led by BTO aims to identify some of the key challenges of monitoring climate change adaptation, and to combat these with a framework for measuring adaptation success. This framework can be used by conservation organisations, governments and other decision-makers to learn from our current adaptation measures and improve the effectiveness of future action. The challenge of measuring adaptation success The challenge of measuring adaptation success The first challenge of measuring adaptation success is its very definition. Different stakeholders may disagree about what constitutes ‘success’, and actions which are considered successful now may not be sufficient in the future given the increasing severity of climate change. The second challenge is in attributing changes in the natural environment to a particular cause, whether that is climate change or adaptation measures in conservation work. Ecological systems are highly complex and it is not always possible to pin down a single driver for the changes we see. Finally, measuring the success of climate change adaptation requires long-term and large-scale monitoring. This can be challenging to fund, but as we know at BTO, citizen science data can be a crucial resource when tracking climate change impacts. Using an indicator framework to measure adaptation success Developing indicators for adaptation allows us to track success at different stages of climate change adaptation. At the earliest stage, we can track ‘enabling conditions’ like resources for conservation and the existence of monitoring schemes. . These indicators are not ultimate objectives of adaptation, but pave the way for further action. They also capture the most rapid changes which occur as a result of new adaptation policies. We can then begin to track ‘activity measures’, which describe the extent of resulting adaptation actions such as habitat creation or species management. These actions typically aim to manage the natural world in a way that allows species and ecosystems to persist in a changing climate. Assessing the ecological responses to these activities shows us whether we are on the right track in terms of the adaptation strategies we have put in place. ‘Results-based’ indicators then measure adaptation success in the context of climate change. Successful adaptation actions will alter species’ responses to climate change, either by reducing negative impacts such as preventing extinctions of cold-adapted species, or promoting positive responses such as the range expansion of habitat specialists of conservation concern. Ultimately, successful climate change adaptation is about species’ persistence, building and maintaining ecological integrity and the provision of ecosystem service in a changing climate. The authors hope that this paper will stimulate the development of much-needed indicators, improve the evidence base for successful climate change adaptation, and inform more successful conservation action in the face of climate change in the future.

Climate change is impacting wild populations, but its relative importance compared to other causes of change is still unclear. Many studies assume that changes in traits primarily reflect effects of climate change, but this assumption is rarely tested. This paper uses datasets from across Europe, including the BTO's Nest Record Scheme, to show that in European birds global warming was likely the single most important contributor to temporal trends in laying date, body condition, and offspring number. However, non-temperature factors were also important and acted in the same direction, implying that attributing temporal trends solely to rising temperatures overestimates the impact of climate warming. Differences among species in the amount of trait change were predominantly determined by these nontemperature effects, suggesting that species differences are not due to variation in sensitivity to temperature.

BTO staff co-author a rebuttal letter setting out the importance of the careful use and interpretation of citizen science data in estimating avian population sizes.

Rotational burning of vegetation is a common form of land management in UK upland habitats, and is restricted to the colder half of the year, with the time period during which burning may be carried out in upland areas varying between countries. In England and Scotland, this period runs from the 1st October to 15th April, but in the latter jurisdiction, permission can be granted to extend the burning season to 30th April. In Wales, this period runs from 1st October to 31st March. This report sets out timing of breeding information for upland birds in England, Scotland and Wales, to assess whether rotational burning poses a threat to populations of these species, and the extent to which any such threat varies in space and time.

Like many things, long-term monitoring of bird populations was interrupted during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Here, BTO scientists look at the effects of restrictions on participation in the Breeding Bird Survey during 2020 compared to previous years, and devise analytical methods to overcome the issues that emerged.