High Level Summary of Statistics Trend Last update: Tuesday, May 27, 2008
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 an increase in abundance of 17% from 1994 to 2004 but this follows declines, particularly in farmland birds, in earlier years. The number of waterbirds rose between the mid 1980s and mid 1990s and subsequently have stayed relatively stable. Seabird numbers fell by one third between 1991 and 2004.
Source: British Trust for Ornithology/Royal Society for Protection of Birds/Joint Nature Conservation Comitee/Wildfowl and Wetland Trust
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