Conservationists are celebrating as the call of the curlew has returned to Trasna Island in Lower Lough Erne following extensive restoration efforts.
RSPB NI has been working alongside the Lough Erne Landscape Partnership, CurlewLIFE projects and the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs, since RSPB’s acquisition of the island in 2017.
Since then, the charity undertook extensive habitat restoration, including the removal of trees and scrub from the shoreline to create five hectares of wet grassland, which is feeding habitat for breeding waders.
The team started to see the benefits of their efforts with curlew and other breeding waders fledging young at the site for the first time since the 1980s.
Amy Burns, RSPB NI’s Lower Lough Erne Estate Manager said she is “over the moon” that curlew and other waders have responded so positively to the undertaken on Trasna.
“We’ve recorded fledging success with curlew, but also with lapwing, oystercatcher and snipe as well,” she said.
“It’s great to see that conservation works, and to see breeding waders starting to call Trasna home.”
The land on Trasna Island was previously unmanaged, but research during the project uncovered photographs from the 1920s depicting an open, farmed landscape, which was ideal for breeding curlews.
These images inspired the vision for the habitat restoration works, to restore the island with potential for breeding waders.
The landscape of Trasna is now similar as when it was farmed by the ‘Queen of Trasna’, Peggy Elliott. Also known as ‘Orange Peggy’, she lived there until 1891 when she passed away at the age of 108.
Amy continued: “Through projects like the Lough Erne Landscape Partnership and Curlew In Crisis we managed to do a lot of work to re create open wet grassland conditions putting in wet features, cutting rush to the point we now have almost 20 pairs of breeding waders on a site that didn’t support any before this work was done and it is absolutely brilliant to be able to say that.”
