Curlew breeding success in upland habitats depends on the interaction between nest habitat quality, vegetation structure, and predator pressure. Conservation management targets all three factors.
Upland curlew welfare during breeding involves chronic predation pressure on both adults and chicks. Individual curlews that lose nests to predation experience the behavioural and physiological stress of failed breeding attempts. Chicks that die from predation experience acute fear and distress. The severity of nest predation rates means that individual birds may experience multiple failed breeding attempts across their lifetime before raising any chicks to fledging. Conservation management that improves nest success directly reduces the frequency of these welfare-compromising failure events.