Corn bunting pays price of £10 million cut in farm funding

Published on Tuesday 8 February 2011 14:43

CONSERVATIONISTS have warned that cuts in government funding for conservation projects could lead to the decline of once-common farmyard bird the corn bunting.

The RSPB has claimed that just 120,000 would be needed to fund a project which new research shows would sustain the rapidly declining population of the bird, known as the "fat bird of the barley" due to its preferred nesting ground in growing crops.

In Scotland, the bird is now found only in eastern Scotland and the Western Isles - with as few as 850 breeding pairs remaining - after a change in farming methods left it without suitable habitats for feeding and nesting and vulnerable to harvesting operations.

A recent study showed that the small proportion of farms handed financial incentives to adopt corn bunting-friendly practices have seen the population of the species level while it continued to decline elsewhere.

The report, published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, showed that measures targeted at supporting corn buntings, including increasing the amount of food available to them and delaying mowing grassland where they were nesting, increased numbers by 5.6 per cent a year.

Vicki Swales, RSPB Scotland's head of land use policy, said: "In this time of financial constraints, it is more important than ever that public funds are used wisely. Agri-environment funds help farmers to maintain their livelihoods and farm with wildlife in mind."

She added: "As highlighted by this study, targeted schemes really deliver results and offer excellent value for money. It is disappointing therefore that in the recent budget proposals, the Scottish Government decided to cut agri-environment expenditure by 10 million whilst protecting other, less environmentally focused, payments.

"Agri-environment schemes already receive a small proportion - just 7 per cent - of the over 600 million spent on farm support each year."

UK farmers received 3.3 billion a year in subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), but only a small proportion paid for agri-environment schemes.

A spokeswoman for the Scottish Government said: "We understand the concerns expressed by the RSPB and are in discussions with stakeholders over how to best prioritise budgets for the Scotland Rural Development Programme.

"It would be premature, at this stage, to say what the outcome of these discussions will be."

Species on 'Red List'

THE corn bunting is a fairly nondescript, brown, farmland bird.

The sexes appear similar in plumage, although the males are around 20 per cent larger than females, at up to 19 cm long.

Its diet consists of large insects in summer and grain and weed seeds in winter. Corn bunting numbers have plummeted by almost 90 per cent since 1970, leading the RSPB to put it on its "red list" of endangered species.