Why RBBP data are important for conservation

The most important aspect of the RBBP report is the annual review of the status of our regular but rare breeders, at UK, regional and county level, published in British Birds. The RBBP dataset and archive is unique in that it combines county data (collected by local birdwatchers across the country and submitted to county bird recorders), with all other available sources of data on rare breeding birds (such as Schedule 1 and Nest Records Scheme returns, data from RSPB reserves, raptor study group data and other species studies).

Here are some of the important reasons why birdwatchers should submit their records to local bird recorders and why those recorders should submit an annual data return to the RBBP:

• Your records are included in the overall UK population statistics for each species, providing added value and context to the records collected locally.
• Each submission complements the others and allows RBBP to build up annual totals of all the 90-100 rare species which breed in the UK each year.
• Definitive records of breeding of those rarer species which breed only occasionally are recorded for posterity, helping, for example, research and compilers of avifaunas.
• All records are archived safely and separately as part of the UK’s ornithological archive, so that details are not lost in the future.
• The annual statistics are incredibly important to conservation and to science, and are most useful if they cover a consistent and large proportion of the UK’s population of each species.
• RBBP statistics contribute to Government wild bird indicators, reporting requirements for the EU Nature Directives and other international obligations,
  reviews of the UK’s Special Protection Area network, Birds of Conservation Concern assessments and the annual State of the UK’s Birds report. Recent
  research uses have included species studies, informing national survey design and studies on the importance of protected area networks and the impact of climate change. For many of these uses however, accurate locational information is critical as stressed previously; otherwise is it not possible to match records to protected areas or other locations.
• Publication of the report provides feedback to the birding community.
• Submission of data to RBBP also fully serves the observer’s expectations that their data is going forward into national population statistics for rare and scarce breeding species.

In 2019, Panel member David Stroud wrote a ‘BB Eye’ in British Birds entitled The value of monitoring rare breeding birds which explores this topic further.

RBBP policy is to make data available for relevant conservation uses, with appropriate controls over the spatial resolution at which data are provided. Site-specific information is used by JNCC and the national statutory conservation agencies, and national datasets by the RSPB for survey and conservation planning. UK totals for selected species are also supplied to calculate trends for use in the UK, England and Scotland Wild Bird Indicators.

Until 2020, as an EU Member State, the UK Government was required every six years to produce a report under Article 12 of the Birds Directive (EU Directive on the conservation of wild birds 2009/147/EC). The JNCC has coordinated the UK’s response, a process which required updates to population estimates and trends for all UK breeding species; some of these were derived from RBBP data and so support the conservation of these species.

A regular review, The State of the UK’s Birds, is published by a partnership of the RSPB, BTO, WWT and statutory nature conservation agencies. The most recent (Burns et al. 2020) includes a section on scarce and rare breeding birds, giving population estimates and trends based mainly on data collated by the RBBP. RBBP data have also been released at 50-km resolution to the European Breeding Bird Atlas 2, published in December 2020 (Keller et al. 2020).