| WETLANDS - LAPWING FALLOW PLOTS


Fallow plots were fenced with electric fencing to exclude foxes and badgers. © Andrew Hoodless/GWCT


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS


This work was funded by Defra, the Dulverton Trust and the Manydown Trust. We are grateful to all the farmers for site access and valuable discussions. We thank Michael MacDonald and the RSPB field team in East Anglia, along with Nick Tomalin and the RSPB Stone Curlew (Salisbury) team for close co-operation. Phil Grice and Allan Drewitt, both from Natural England, provided helpful advice.


26 | GAME & WILDLIFE REVIEW 2016


chick deaths (n=208) and starvation 14%, with a small number of chicks killed by farm machinery or drowned. Consequently, in 2014-2015, we conducted an experimental trial of the effect of electric fencing, to exclude foxes and badgers from fallow plots, on lapwing chick survival and overall productivity. Breeding lapwings were monitored for a total of 85 plot-years, in which electric fences were present for 38. With the exception of one site, eight-strand 1.1-metre electric fences were largely effective at excluding foxes and badgers from fallow plots. Fencing made no difference to nest survival, which was again high, but we recorded no improvement in chick survival at the plot level (fenced plots 12.5%, unfenced plots 10.9%). The effect of fencing on overall productivity varied significantly between years, with lower productivity on fenced plots than unfenced plots in 2014 (0.36 ± 0.14 and 0.51 ± 0.12 chick/pair respectively), but higher productivity on fenced plots than unfenced plots in 2015 (0.35 ± 0.13 and 0.13 ± 0.05 chick/pair). Why was there no improvement in chick survival with fencing? The chicks inside


the fences were still vulnerable to avian predators, but we had calculated prior to starting the trial that stopping the majority of fox predation should have increased chick survival to about 35-40%. The issue was movement of chicks off plots and hence outside fences, despite brood ranges typically being smaller than the average plot size (two hectares). Analysis of chick survival in relation to location revealed that fences were beneficial when chicks remained inside them, with survival to fledging averaging 29%. We found that chick age had no bearing on the time that chicks spent inside fences and that the crop type surrounding the plot was the most important factor.


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