England's Farm Schemes Won't Pay for the One Thing Curlew Need: Predator Control

Quick summary

• Neither SFI nor CSHT funds lethal predator control, the main immediate cause of Curlew breeding failure.

• Neither scheme supports the multi-farm agreements predator control needs to work at effective scale.

• One SFI grassland option pays £151 per hectare while a better-targeted stewardship option pays only £121.

• Farmers want species-focused, results-based options plus a local facilitator to coordinate nests and control.

Neither of England's two main farm payment schemes offers any provision for controlling the predators that take most Curlew eggs and chicks.

That is the finding of a new review by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority and the RSPB, which scored the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) and Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier (CSHT) against what breeding Curlew actually need.

On predation, both schemes scored the lowest mark available: no provision.

The report identifies predation of eggs and chicks as the main immediate cause of Curlew breeding failure, yet neither scheme funds lethal predator control, and neither supports the multi-farm agreements that control needs to work.

On keepered moorland, professional predator control routinely covers 6,000 hectares or more per keeper. Nothing in SFI or CSHT lets land managers coordinate at anything approaching that scale.

The farmers interviewed reached the same conclusion from the ground up. Every one of them said they would allow lethal predator control on their land, and most were content for local gamekeepers or independent controllers to carry it out across neighbouring holdings.

Six reported that foxes and crows had increased on their farms after nearby estates lost a full-time keeper. Predation, not habitat, was the barrier they named most often.

This tracks with the published evidence the report draws on. Studies of keepered moorland have found professional predator control associated with higher breeding success for Curlew and other ground-nesting waders, carried out at a scale and intensity that lowland and farm-based projects have rarely matched.

The report is blunt that no equivalent mechanism exists in the current schemes.

The scheme that pays more to do less

The review also found the schemes working against themselves. One SFI grassland option, CLIG3, pays £151 per hectare a year for management that does little for waders. A better-targeted Countryside Stewardship option, CUP2, pays £121.

One farmer said he could wipe out the wader nests in a field under the higher-paying option and be paid more for it than for protecting them.

What protection would cost

Where Curlew nest decides what is affordable. Permanent pasture at normal grazing levels suits them. The risks concentrate in silage fields and hay meadows, through heavy stocking at lambing and operations such as mowing, rolling and chain harrowing.

 The farmers' own estimates show why whole-field measures are hard to justify. Excluding stock from a lambing field in April and May came to about £2,400 per hectare a year, and delaying a silage cut to about £1,500.

Protecting a single nest by leaving a small uncut patch came to roughly £90, and stopping spring rolling and harrowing cost almost nothing. These are indicative interview figures, not audited accounts, and the authors say firmer costing is needed.

What farmers want the schemes to do

The farmers were not asking for more of the same. Several described current agreements as payment for farming they already do. They wanted options that name a target species and set out to help it, and many favoured results-based payments that reward outcomes rather than box-ticking.

Seven had taken part in an earlier results-based trial, and reported that paying for results sat more naturally with a farming mindset than paying for prescribed actions.

The report backs a local facilitator role: someone with both farming and ecological knowledge to find nests, coordinate predator control and hold the focus on Curlew across a group of farms.

Where this leaves scheme design

The review recommends making well-targeted Countryside Stewardship options accessible and paying them enough to compete with weaker alternatives, then funding facilitators, predator managers and multi-farm agreements, and in time building a dedicated tier of higher-level actions for evidence-led predator control and nest protection.

The one measure farmers and the evidence both point to is predator control at scale, and it is the one measure the schemes will not pay for.

Key Takeaway

Neither SFI nor CSHT funds predator control, the main measure Curlew recovery needs. Yorkshire Dales farmers would back it and want species-focused, better-paid options to make it happen.