The mountain-breeding dotterel, a bird that has inhabited the highest peaks of Scotland for millennia, could become the first species in the UK to be driven to extinction by climate change, conservationists have warned, as its population has collapsed by nearly 90%.
The stark warning comes from the RSPB, which has been monitoring the striking wader with its distinctive chestnut belly and white supercilium. Once a relatively common sight on the summits of the Cairngorms and Grampians, the dotterel has suffered a precipitous decline in recent decades.
“UK's mountain-breeding dotterel population has dropped 89%, and could be the first bird species lost to climate change.”
According to the charity, the population has fallen by 89% since the late 1980s. The primary driver is thought to be warming temperatures, which are altering the delicate alpine habitat on which the bird depends. As the climate warms, the montane heath and moss where dotterels nest and feed is being encroached upon by lower-altitude vegetation, reducing the area of suitable breeding ground.
The RSPB has described the situation as a "harbinger" of what is to come for other upland and arctic-alpine species. If current trends continue, the dotterel may no longer breed in the UK within a few decades.
The bird is already restricted to a handful of sites in the Scottish Highlands, and the remaining population is increasingly fragmented. Conservationists are calling for urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to protect the remaining high-altitude habitats from other pressures such as recreational disturbance and overgrazing.
The dotterel's decline is not solely a UK phenomenon; the species is also retreating from the southern edges of its global range across the arctic and alpine regions of Eurasia. However, the UK population is among the most vulnerable because it is at the extreme southwestern limit of the species' distribution.
Without significant intervention, the dotterel is likely to be the first of many British birds to be lost as a direct result of climate change, the RSPB warns.