WWF warn of species’ carnage - Humanity’s impact is too destructive

In 2011, a BirdWatch Ireland survey found just eight pairs of breeding curlew in Mayo or Donegal. It was then believed there were fewer than 200 productive pairs on this island, a dramatic decline from 5,000 in the early 1990s.

A National Parks and Wildlife Service survey, in 2015 and 2016, found fewer than 150 breeding pairs. Without immediate action, the once-common curlew will be extinct in Ireland within a decade. It may well be so already.