Livestock Management in Red-Billed Chough Feeding Habitat in Great Britain and the Isle of Man

Abstract

In Great Britain, red billed chough (Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax) breed in discrete populations along the west coast: on Islay and Colonsay, in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland; on the Isle of Man; in Wales; and in Cornwall. Chough are dependent on pastures grazed by cattle and sheep, and their survival is therefore dependent on sympathetic management of grassland. The Scottish population is in decline and all other populations are growing or stable. Sixty-three farmers in these locations whose farms were known to support feeding chough were asked questions about their farm management using a structured, questionnaire-based personal interview. Islay farms were significantly larger and had more grazing area, with the lowest stocking densities. Welsh farms had the least cropping area and the smallest number of cattle. Cornwall had the smallest number of sheep per farm. Welsh farms were more likely not to house cattle during winter. Liver fluke in sheep and ticks and tick-borne disease were a higher concern on Islay than other locations and abortion in sheep was of highest concern on the Isle of Man. Islay farmers used between four and 13 times as many treatments per year as farmers at other locations and the application 2 rate of triclabendazole (TCBZ) was higher on Islay. The rate of application of other products, including macrocyclic lactones ML, did not differ among locations. The study described here shows clear differences in the farm grazing management, in the priority given to animal health problems and in the frequency of application of veterinary parasiticides among four locations that provide feeding habitat for chough in the UK. These differences suggest that the viability of chough populations might be favoured by higher intensity grazing, and by low rates of application of veterinary parasiticides of either the TCBZ or synthetic pyrethroid SP, or both classes of parasiticides.

Integrating advances in population and evolutionary ecology with conservation strategy through long‐term studies of red‐billed choughs

“…This will in turn require observational, experimental and comparative investigations of effects of agricultural activities such as grazing, silage cutting and livestock treatment regimes, as are now commencing (e.g. MacGillivray et al., 2018; Gilbert et al., 2019; Jonsson et al., 2020; SCSG, unpubl. data).…”