Christine, Phil and Steve have published a new paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, working in collaboration with researchers from Imperial College London, St Andrews University and BirdLife International. The study combines species distribution models and bio-physical models of bird flight range to predict how climate change will affect the migratory journeys of 77 European migratory bird species. They found that long-distance migrants will likely have to travel further in the future, as their suitable breeding and non-breeding ranges both move towards the poles. As a result of this, 37% of migratory journeys undertaken by long-distance migrants are predicted to require an additional stopover in future. This will mean that migratory journeys will occur over longer time-periods, making species more susceptible to threatening processes during these journeys, such as predation and poaching.
Predicted spring migration routes of collared fly-catcher in a) 2000 and b) 2070
!Meanwhile, Tom has published a new paper in Conservation Letters , led by Jeremy Cusack and colleagues at the University of Stirling, as part of a large international collaboration. The paper explores five case-studies of conservation conflict involving large grazing bird species and agriculture across northern Europe. They discovered that changes in management effort (harvesting, compensation and scaring) are often asynchronous with changes in bird populations, likely due to time-lags between population monitoring and management, and inconsistent use of predictive models. This study highlights the need for more timely management responses to tackle conservation conflicts. You can find out more about the paper here and here.
This paper follows on from Tom's recent study in the Journal of Applied Ecology, with colleagues from the universities of Stirling, Aberdeen and Edinburgh, which revealed how land-use and climate change can shape the ecological contexts of conservation conflicts. They focused on the Scottish island of Islay, where a growing population of Greenland barnacle geese cause serious economic damage to farmland. They found that both improvements to pasture through fertilizer use and increasing temperatures have boosted goose population growth. This illustrates the value of exploring socio-ecological history to understand the processes leading to conservation conflict, by identifying elements of conflict that are controllable, such as local habitat management, and those that are less controllable, such as climate change, but which both need to be taken into account in predictive management models.
This paper follows on from Tom's recent study in the Journal of Applied Ecology, with colleagues from the universities of Stirling, Aberdeen and Edinburgh, which revealed how land-use and climate change can shape the ecological contexts of conservation conflicts. They focused on the Scottish island of Islay, where a growing population of Greenland barnacle geese cause serious economic damage to farmland. They found that both improvements to pasture through fertilizer use and increasing temperatures have boosted goose population growth. This illustrates the value of exploring socio-ecological history to understand the processes leading to conservation conflict, by identifying elements of conflict that are controllable, such as local habitat management, and those that are less controllable, such as climate change, but which both need to be taken into account in predictive management models.
Greenland barnacle geese feeding on the rich pastures of the inner Hebrides (photo: N. Bunnefeld)
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