Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to improve the habitats of curlew birds.

The UK network of 273 classified special protection areas, covering approximately 3.4 million hectares of key habitats, protects many rare, threatened and vulnerable birds including curlews.

The Government’s agri-environment schemes have been designed to encourage habitat management to promote curlew conservation in targeted areas, specifically to provide suitable nesting and foraging conditions.

Natural England is working with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds on a recovery programme aimed at providing a coordinated approach to the management of curlew habitats, including predator control to increase breeding numbers. This forms part of an international action plan to address the ‘near threatened’ status of the curlew, which the UK will support in our role as signatory of the African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbird Agreement.