Curlews are an iconic part of the UK’s farmed landscapes, but their numbers have declined dramatically in recent decades. Farmland is a vital curlew breeding habitat, so farmers have a vital role to play in helping this species recover. Across the country, many are already adopting management approaches that support curlews alongside productive farming, demonstrating how conservation and agriculture can work hand in hand.
This blog summarises three presentations about Curlew-friendly Farming, including an overview and two case studies:
- Nature-Friendly Farming with Martin Lines (Nature Friendly Farming Network)
- Guided by Nature: Grazing for Curlews and Customers with Dr Nikki Yoxall
- Creating Space for Nature: Restoring a Wetland on Our Farm with Pippa Southorn
Nature-Friendly Farming
In this introductory webinar, Martin Lines (Farmer and CEO of the Nature Friendly Farming Network) explores why farming with nature is better for our businesses, our environment and is also the most productive and sustainable way of getting food from our land
Martin Lines will cover the following topics on nature-friendly farming:
- Future of Farming: Why adopting nature-friendly practices matters for long-term farm resilience, biodiversity, and sustainable food production.
- Practical Nature-Friendly Approaches: How farmers can adopt methods that enhance wildlife across the farmed landscape while remaining realistic about day-to-day farming.
- Biodiversity Benefits: Drawing on his experience in farming and policy, Martin will explore how measures that support biodiversity can also strengthen productive, resilient farm businesses.
- Soils and Landscape: How working with nature benefits soils, species, and the wider landscape, integrating environmental health with farming productivity.
- Real-World Implementation: Opportunities to reflect on what these practices look like in action, with examples grounded in everyday farm management.
Martin Lines farms arable crops in South Cambridgeshire and is Chief Executive of the Nature Friendly Farming Network, where he focuses on soil health, integrated pest management, mixed rotations and schemes that pay for public goods. He works with government, retailers and the finance sector to support farmers with practical solutions and fair funding, while convening farmer networks and championing resilient businesses, better food and more nature.
Q&A with Martin Lines
What are your top three priorities for helping farmers improve conditions for nature on their land?
Firstly, we need to help farmers realise what nature they already have on their land, but also what is missing. The shifting baseline problem is particularly pertinent here – just because there are some nice species present on the land today doesn’t mean the land wasn’t even better for nature in the past. Also, when thinking about nature that’s been lost, is it the species that are missing, or the habitats? Secondly, we need policy. How do we incentivise farmers through economic opportunities to protect nature as a public good? This is an exciting new area of policymaking. We need to move conversations away from yields being the only acknowledged value of a farmed landscape. Thirdly, we need to support farmers through peer-to-peer communities and networks. Bringing people together to share ideas and encourage each other is essential.
What are the biggest barriers to nature-friendly farming?
Personally, I think that the power that the legacy agricultural industry has over government policy is the biggest barrier. We see this in regards to use of chemicals, for example. A lot of pressure is placed on preserving the status quo. I think preserving the status quo is unambitious. We have seen the biodiversity of farmed landscapes in Britain decline dramatically in the last few decades – we now need nature recovery. How do we uplift nature-friendly voices in the supply chain and governments to push back against agricultural industry lobbying? This is the important question. We need a collective voice. Only through that will we slowly shift prevailing opinion.
What schemes currently exist to help farmers do nature-friendly farming,
and what are your thoughts on their effectiveness?
The main scheme comes from the government. A bit of history first, though. In the past, when the UK was part of the European Union, farmers across the UK received an area-based payment that encouraged farming the full extent of land – up to 10cm from the site boundary. This was policy based on maximising ‘productive’ output, with no explicit concession made for nature. In recent years, in England, we’ve moved away from this focus on productivity alone and towards a system called as ELMS – the Environmental Land Management Scheme. The devolved nations seem on track to adopt similar systems in the future. The basic principle of ELMS is to pay farmers for various actions, those that boost productivity and those that benefit biodiversity. At the Nature Friendly Farming Network, we’ve been lobbying hard to make sure the recognised biodiversity-benefitting-actions translate to real tangible improvements on the ground. Examples of such actions would include protecting land for ground-nesting birds, retaining old hedgerows, spreading herbal lays or birdseed mixes, leaving wider margins around arabke fields, managing water and soil health sustainably, and so on. We’re now paying farmers to build resilience into their farm businesses, which is really good to see, and the ELMS policy is certainly a step in the right direction. ELMS has, however, faced challenges, particularly due to the turbulent nature of leadership and ministership in government over the past five years. We haven’t had consistency of delivery for a while. We really need that consistency if we are to keep farmers on side. Our current data shows only 50% of farmers in England are part of a government agri-environment scheme.
Other funding opportunities for nature-friendly farming are also available, such as those associated with nature conservation organisations, or Biodiversity Net Gain offsetting.
Have you encountered much resistance from farmers to nature-friendly
farming?
We have received a fair bit of resistance from farmers, yes, particularly in the early days. I think the perception used to be that we (and by we, I mean the Nature Friendly Farming Network) were just a mouthpiece for conservationists, i.e., we were just there to try to force farmers what conservationists wanted, without any actual care for the farmers’ livelihoods. In reality, of course, we are an independent body representing a community of farmers who care both about nature and the future of farming. Fortunately, I do now get the sense that the tide is finally turning. Every year I speak at lots of talks and events around the UK. Last year was the first year I didn’t have at least one farmer coming up to me and bending my ear. What these angry farmers wanted, ultimately, was support and solutions to help them cope with the challenging conditions of the day. They could see the markets moving, they could see the climate and the weather changing, and they felt their future was unstable. I see the Nature Friendly Farming Network as being part of the solution to those challenges, not part of the problem!
What benefits do farmers get for signing up to the Nature Friendly Farming Network?
First and foremost, farmers get the opportunity to meet and network with fellow
farmers with similar mindsets. We encourage people to form communities, clans,
groups, hubs, and so on, across the countryside and across the country. Beyond
this, we offer support and solutions. For example, farmers who are new to nature-
friendly farming can learn from those who are already benefitting from existing agri-
environment schemes and making them work on their farms, and see how it’s done.
Even experienced nature-friendly farmers in our network tell us that they’re always
learning new too. We are all benefitting constantly from one another – sharing
experience, supporting each other, encouraging each other.
Guided by Nature: Grazing for Curlews and Customers
Nikki will share her experience of using Adaptive Multi-Paddock Grazing to support ground-nesting birds while maintaining a productive farming business. The talk will explore how grazing management can help create suitable conditions for breeding Curlew, Lapwing and Redshank, and will reflect on the practical lessons learned from implementing this approach on the farm.
Dr Nikki Yoxall is Technical Director at Pasture for Life (PfL) and a first-generation farmer. She runs an organic, PfL-certified suckler herd in the Angus Glens, in partnership with her husband James and Rottal Estate. She combines academic research, leadership in agricultural knowledge exchange, and practical farming experience to support collaborative research projects and farmer networks. She is a 2026 Nuffield Scholar exploring the design of climate-adapted livestock systems.
Q&A with Nikki Yoxall
Have curlew numbers on your land gone up, gone down or stayed the same?
Numbers are stable. Of course, there’s been slight dips up and down over the years, but looking at long-term trends, it’s relatively secure. We are lucky to have some enthusiastic volunteer bird ringers who ring curlews on our land – so we have some data on this sort of thing. I understand they’ve identified that at least some individual curlews are returning to our land year on year, which is great.
How do forests on and near your land effect your ground-nesting bird populations, in light of predators?
There is a commercial forestry estate on the other side of the river from us, but impacts from predators living within that are probably at least partly negated by the presence of the river as a barrier. We do also have lots of trees around the estate, including some smaller forested areas. But we also have lots of areas that are open. Ultimately we are very conscious of maintaining a balance between habitat types. In our upcoming 700-ha forest planting project, for example, we have included a 200-ha open ground area specifically planned to provide habitat for ground-nesting birds. This is being delivered in partnership with the RSPB. Another thing we do to help protect ground-nesting birds is to maintain meadows with long grass which support abundant small mammal populations. These small mammals then act as an alternative food source for predators (e.g. birds of prey, foxes) which might otherwise go for ground-nesting bird chicks. The long grass also helps to keep chicks hidden.
Do you think the presence of cattle deters predators at all?
I don’t think so, really. I see stoats and weasels and pine martens about quite a lot – I don’t think the cattle deter them much. But potentially? The bigger deterrent of predators is probably us as humans. This is particularly noticeable during calving season, when we as farmers are very active in the fields. We don’t often see predators at this time. Coincidentally this often aligns with the time of year where ground-nesting birds are incubating eggs in their nests. So, perhaps we as farmers going about our work are inadvertently defending ground-nesting bird nests at the time of year at which they are most vulnerable!?
Does a farm have to be organic to be nature-friendly?
I don’t think you have to be certified organic to be nature-friendly, no. As a personal example, prior to moving to Rottal in 2025, we ran a separate grazing business and were working at organic standards, however because we were working with multiple land-owners and holdings it wasn’t possible for us to be organic certified. That work was still very much nature-friendly. So, I don’t think the two things – being organic and being nature-friendly – necessarily go hand-in-hand. What I would say, however, is that there is a wealth of evidence which demonstrates the benefits of organic farming approaches on nature and biodiversity, and we know that you see higher biodiversity on organic farms.
Creating Space for Nature: Restoring a Wetland on Our Farm
In this talk, Pippa will share the story of recreating a wetland on her farm, including the practical steps involved, the challenges encountered, and the benefits it has brought for wildlife. The presentation will include footage of curlews in Thanet and explore how the farm is being managed to provide suitable nesting habitat, helping to support curlews should they choose to breed there in the future.
Pippa Southorn is transforming 900 acres of marshy, low-lying land on the Isle of Thanet, Kent, with a nature-friendly approach that marries agriculture with biodiversity. She’s ensuring this vital landscape thrives, stays profitable, and is ready to meet tomorrow’s challenges.
Q&A with Pippa Southorn
One of the major threats to wintering populations of ground-nesting birds is dogs. Do you get much disturbance from dog-walkers on your land?
We do get some disturbance yes. There’s a public footpath alongside the river. Fortunately, it tends to be a relatively small numbers of dogs. We’ve also been successful in encouraging local people who like to run their dogs along the footpath to leave some distance between them and the wetland scrapes where the ground-nesting birds hang out.
Did you get any archaeological analysis done when creating the wetland scrapes?
We didn’t on that particular section. The marshes around Pegwell Bay generally are a very important archaeological site – the area is believed to be the landing place of Julius Caeser, of St Augustine, and of the Saxons. So there’s lots of archaeological interest about! When creating the scrapes on our land we only removed the top 70 cm of soil, and just pushed it to the side to create ditches. That soil still exists (it’s just been moved a little), so could still be the subject of archaeological investigations in the future. Plus all the really interesting archaeological stuff would probably be below the top 70 cm, anyway.
Do you know where the curlews that overwinter on your land go to breed in the spring and summer?
We don’t know yet, no. But Graham Barker has been ringing curlews on our land, so I suppose it’s just a matter of waiting to see if any other bird ringers across the country come across our curlews in breeding grounds. We’d love to find out. It’s possible our curlews are breeding in another country, even!
How important has ELMS funding been for you?
It’s been very important. It would have been far too expensive to do all this exciting habitat enhancement work without that funding. Unfortunately, our ELMS funding is running out next year, so the future is looking a bit uncertain. We need more funding to continue to manage the scrapes, removing vegetation and ensuring the sediment is suitable for the birds.
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