EPA - Ireland's Environment, An Integrated Assessment - 2020

Chapter 15: Environmental Performance, Policy and Implementation POLICY AREA CURRENT ASSESSMENT OUTLOOK NOTES NATURE Nature Conservation status of EU protected habitats Based on the latest assessments (NWPS, 2019), 15% of EU protected habitats have a favourable conservation status, while 85% have an inadequate or a bad status. In terms of the trends in EU protected habitats, 53% are stable, 46% are declining, and only 2% are improving. Conservation status of EU protected species Based on the latest assessments (NWPS, 2019), 57% of EU protected species have a favourable conservation status; 30% have an inadequate or a bad status. In terms of the trends in EU protected species, 55% are stable, 17% are improving, 15% are declining, and 13% are unknown. Status and trends of bird populations Almost 20% of Ireland’s breeding bird species are in long-term decline. Approximately 30% of breeding species populations are stable or have increased over the long term. This includes some relatively recent colonists. Some of our breeding farmland songbirds are under increasing pressures from the modernisation and intensification of agricultural practices. Breeding waders such as the curlew and lapwing have seen a 93% decline in breeding populations over the long term. The populations of over half of wintering birds are declining over the short term, this includes waders and duck species. Ireland’s wintering waterbirds may be responding to climate change as many species are showing a north- easterly shift in their range across Europe. Butterflies Butterfly populations are sensitive to changes in climate and land use. The Irish Butterfly Monitoring Scheme, coordinated by the National Biodiversity Data Centre (NBDC), shows that the current long-term trend is of moderate decline. Across 15 common and widespread species, the highest butterfly populations observed since the monitoring scheme began in 2008 were recorded in 2010 and the lowest in 2016. Five species have experienced serious or moderate population declines since 2008, three species have increasing populations, four have stable populations and three are too variable to assign a statistically rigorous trend (NBDC, 2019; Judge and Lysaght, 2020). Overall nature assessment Overall current assessment is ‘very poor’. Deteriorating trends dominate, especially for protected habitats. In the absence of far-reaching measures, the outlook is largely not on track to meeting policy objectives. 411