MA Asks RSPB to Explain What Its Reserve Bird Data Show
Quick summary
MA asks RSPB to clarify what published reserve bird-monitoring data reveal about upland bird numbers.
Available records for 2014–18 and 2019–23 show mixed changes, but completeness and comparability are uncertain.
MA has requested fuller data, methodology details and explanations of how RSPB assesses upland management outcomes.
Defra’s review should compare all upland management systems using measured outcomes and evidence-based alternatives.
The Moorland Association has asked the RSPB to help clarify what its published reserve bird-monitoring data can, and cannot, tell us about changes in upland bird numbers.
The work forms part of the MA’s preparation for Defra’s current Call for Evidence on gamebird release, shooting and welfare during rearing.
As part of that exercise, we have been examining publicly available evidence about the outcomes for upland bird species under different forms of land management. That includes the RSPB’s Annual Reserve Avian Monitoring data, published through the NBN Atlas.
These are records arising from the RSPB’s annual monitoring of birds across its nature-reserve network. The RSPB has continued to collect reserve monitoring data even during periods when it was not publishing the detailed annual reserve reports it had produced historically. Its 2012 RSPB Reserves report, for example, reported reserve bird populations and progress against species targets for 2011.
That makes the underlying monitoring data important. If the RSPB is monitoring bird populations across its own reserve network, those records should help show what outcomes are being achieved over time. The key question is whether the published data are sufficiently complete and comparable to allow that assessment. That is what we are now asking the RSPB to clarify.
Given the RSPB’s prominent role in the public debate over upland management, there is a strong public-interest case for those monitoring outcomes, and the methods used to assess them, to be as transparent as possible.
What the data show
We therefore looked at what the published monitoring records show for a selection of upland bird species. When we compare the available numerical records for 2014-18 with those for 2019-23, some species show higher recorded numbers in the later period and others show lower numbers.
Why the figures need care
The dataset also raises important questions. There are substantial differences in the availability of numerical records between species, reserves and years. In some cases the data record only that a species was present, without saying how many birds were counted. In other cases there appears to be no published annual record for a particular reserve and species.
Most importantly, it is not yet clear from the published dataset exactly what every numerical “Individual count” represents, whether values are directly comparable between years and reserves, or what effect changes in survey effort and reporting may have had.
This matters because conservation policy should be judged against measured outcomes. If published monitoring records cannot be used reliably to assess those outcomes, it is reasonable to ask what evidence is being used instead.
For those reasons, the MA is not drawing conclusions from the figures about the effects of RSPB management.
What we have asked the RSPB
Instead, we have written to RSPB Chief Executive Beccy Speight asking the organisation to explain how the published data should be interpreted, what fuller monitoring information it holds, and how it assesses whether management on its upland reserves is delivering the intended outcomes. We have also supplied the RSPB with our analysis and methodology so that it can see exactly how the figures have been produced.
Among the questions we have asked are:
what the numerical count field represents for different species and surveys
how annual survey coverage, effort and methodology affect comparability
what presence-only and missing records mean
whether the RSPB holds more complete reserve-level monitoring and survey-effort data
whether the published dataset is considered suitable for analysing population change through time
what changes in management occurred at the relevant upland reserves
how the RSPB itself measures the success of its upland management for species such as curlew, golden plover, black grouse and ring ouzel.
Why this matters to Defra
We have also asked a broader question that is particularly relevant to Defra’s review: what is the right evidence-based comparison - in other words, what would realistically happen to the land, habitats and wildlife if grouse moor management changed or ceased?
If land presently managed for grouse shooting were managed differently, the consequences would not be limited to the absence of shooting. There could also be changes in grazing, predator management, vegetation management, rewetting, woodland creation, access, monitoring and conservation expenditure.
Those alternative outcomes need evidence too.
The same evidential standard should apply to every system of upland management
Policy should not be built on demanding measured evidence from one management system while treating the claimed benefits of another as self-evident. Grouse-moor management should be expected to demonstrate its outcomes, but so should the alternatives advocated in its place.
That is why comparisons between different forms of upland management need to be based on measured outcomes rather than assumptions about what one management system or another ought to deliver.
The RSPB’s extensive reserve network should provide valuable real-world evidence with which to test these questions. Where different approaches to upland management are being advocated, the outcomes delivered on land already managed under those approaches are directly relevant evidence.
Equally, its published monitoring data demonstrate why considerable care is needed before changes in recorded numbers are interpreted as population trends or attributed to particular management practices.
Our approach is straightforward: publish the method, test the evidence, ask difficult questions and judge every management system by its measured outcomes.
We have asked the RSPB to respond by 2 October and will update members when we receive its reply.
