There are concerns that waders nesting in open landscapes are threatened by habitat fragmentation, and may be increasingly so in the future by a drive to plant more trees. Plantations obviously remove nesting space used by species such as Lapwing and Ringed Plover but they could also create hiding places for predators that can then target nests in the vicinity. In a 2022 paper in Animal Conservation, Triin Kaasiku and colleagues report on the outcomes of 753 Estonian wader nests in open areas close to forest edges along Estonia’s coastal fringe. Which are the key predators and where do they hunt?
Wide horizons
Open landscapes have been lost at an unprecedented rate over the past century. Warmer temperatures and reduced management of semi-natural landscapes provide ideal circumstances for the establishment of shrub growth and the expansion of forests. At the same time, afforestation campaigns are encouraging tree planting, to…
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