Curlew, lapwing, redshank, and snipe have all declined dramatically as UK lowland grasslands have been drained and agriculturally intensified, with the welfare of millions of individual birds affected.
The welfare of wading bird populations in lowland Britain has been massively compromised by the drainage of wet grasslands. Individual lapwings, curlews, and redshanks nesting in intensively managed dry grassland experience lower nest success, chick mortality from mowing and invertebrate scarcity, and chronic nutritional stress from insufficient invertebrate prey in compacted dry soils. Wet grassland restoration directly improves individual bird welfare through increased food availability, appropriate nest sites, and reduced chick mortality. Each hectare of restored wet grassland provides welfare benefit to dozens of individual breeding birds annually, and the cumulative effect of landscape-scale restoration across river floodplains would represent an enormous improvement in lowland wader welfare.