Do population estimates matter?

wadertales

blog top godwits This month (March 2019) saw the publication of Population estimates of wintering waterbirds in Great Britain, which includes all the wader species from Little Stint to Curlew. Given that the Wetland Bird Survey already covers about 2000 wetlands and provides annual monitoring, why do we need to know the total number of birds in Great Britain?

I suggest four reasons:

If we count the number of Curlew and we have a figure for the European population then we know that Great Britain is responsible for nearly 20% of Europe’s Curlew each winter, thereby strengthening the case for national conservation action;
If we have a national figure, then we know that a flock of 2000 Black-tailed Godwit represents (as it turns out) over 5% of the British total, which is a useful criterion when assessing the conservation importance of individual sites;
Population totals help to put annual percentage changes into…