High Level Summary of Statistics Trend Last update: Monday, June 15, 2009
Status of Wild Bird Populations
Birds can respond relatively quickly to variations in habitat quality, through changes in breeding output, survival or dispersal. Since most bird species are relatively easy to identify and count, geographically widespread, abundant and diurnal, birds are often used as indicators of environmental change. The Scottish Government has established a National Indicator to increase the index of abundance of terrestrial breeding birds in Scotland against a 2006 base year. This is used as a proxy measure of biodiversity, as biodiversity cannot be measured by a single indicator. The graph shows the indices for terrestrial breeding birds, breeding seabirds and waterbirds.
The index for the 68 terrestrial breeding bird species showed a long term increase in the index of abundance by 22 index points between 1994 to 2007, the index of abundance increased by 9 index points between 2006 and 2007, this followed a decrease of 8 index points the previous year. The number of wintering waterbirds rose between the mid 1980s and mid 1990s, peaking in 1996. Since then there has been a steady decline, with the abundance of wintering waterbirds falling 8 index points between 1996 and 2005. Seabird abundance has been in decline since 1991, in 2008 the abundance of seabirds was 22% lower than it had been in 1986.
View chart data
Source: British Trust for Ornithology/Royal Society for Protection of Birds/Joint Nature Conservation Comitee/Wildfowl and Wetland Trust
(1) The population of wintering waterbirds is measured in the winter beginning in the year indicated. i.e 2003 indicates populations measured from approximately September 2003 - March 2004.
Further Information