Researchers from the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) Wales have developed a new and highly advanced drone technique that is revolutionising practical curlew conservation by allowing them to locate the nests of this elusive wader and work with farmers to protect the chicks from being killed by machinery or predators.

The drone work has been developed by GWCT over five years of surveying various species across Wales, including deer, brown hare, grey squirrels, feral goats, grey seals, partridge, terns…and curlew!

Using a combination of thermal and zoom cameras operated from a drone, the nests can be located very quickly and accurately, while causing no disturbance to the birds.

GWCT conservationists and curlew experts James Warrington and Katie Appleby have spent the breeding season working with farmers, locating and protecting curlew and other wading bird nests, and moving chicks to safety before they harvest crops or cut fields.

Curlew numbers in Wales have declined sharply and it is predicted that it may become extinct as a viable breeding population within 10 years.

To help curlew, GWCT is part of a 3-year partnership project called ‘Curlew Connections Wales’, which aims to locate and monitor breeding curlew by working with farmers and the local community to find and protect nests from predation, alongside conducting predation management, across three sites in Wales.

Through this work in Montgomeryshire and North Radnorshire the GWCT has been able to show the viability of drones as a research tool that causes no disturbance to adults and importantly, leaves no scent trails that can lead predators to the nests, proving the success of methodology that we have been developing for five years.

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