In 1979, the European Community adopted the Council Directive
on the conservation of Wild Birds (commonly known as the Birds
Directive), which relates “to the conservation of all species of
naturally occurring birds in the wild state in the European
territory of the Member States to which the treaty applies”
(79/409/EEC). The Birds Directive covers the protection, management
and control of rare or vulnerable birds listed in Annex 1 of the
Directive (Article 4.1) and regularly occurring migratory species
not listed in Annex 1 (Article 4.2) through a range of conservation
and management measures. It requires Member States to identify and
classify in particular the most suitable territories in number and
size as special protection areas (termed Special Protection Areas
or SPAs by Member States) for the conservation of specified bird
species.
Although this Directive states that conservation measures
should be taken both in “the geographical sea and land area”
(79/409/EEC), and while there are some SPAs for inland and coastal
areas, most SPAs do not extend further than mean low water mark (or
mean low water springs in Scotland).
This gap in coverage is currently being addressed by Joint
Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC), by considering three
potential types of marine SPA (Johnston et al.
2002):
1. marine
extensions to existing seabird colony SPAs (see McSorley et
al. 2003);
2. inshore
areas used by marine waterbirds (e.g. seaduck, divers and grebes)
outside of the breeding season; and
3. offshore
areas used by wide-ranging seabirds, probably for feeding but
possibly for other reasons.
These three strands form part of a larger project, the Marine
Natura Project, currently extending the coverage of SPAs under the
provision of the Birds Directive and Special Areas of Conservation
(SACs), under the provision of the Habitats Directive, into the
marine environment (Johnston et al. 2002). Work has
recently been completed to propose extensions to existing breeding
seabird colony SPAs for auks and gannets into the marine
environment, as part of Strand 1 (McSorley et al. 2003),
and additionally to designate Carmarthen Bay as the first wholly
marine SPA in the UK, as part of Strand 2 (Webb et al. in
press).
Guidelines for selecting SPAs for inshore aggregations of
waterbirds in the non-breeding season have been prepared (Webb and
Reid, 2003) and are in the later stages of review for adoption by
the Joint Nature Conservation Committee. These guidelines
have been drawn upon considerably in preparing this report.
This report describes analyses of data from aerial surveys
conducted in Liverpool Bay as part of the All Wales Common Scoter
Survey, commissioned by a consortium of CCW, EN, the Crown Estates
and a number of companies with commercial interests in Liverpool
Bay. The extent of area surveyed was limited by various
logistical and resource constraints but nevertheless was deemed
sufficiently large to allow detection of major dispersion patterns
of all species likely to be present; of course there may be other
adjacent areas that merit future survey. Surveys were carried
out by WWT under contract (WWT Wetland Advisory Service 2003,
Cranswick 2003). These surveys took place during the winters
of 2000/2001, 2001/2002 and 2002/2003, but only the results from
the last two years are presented in this report. The analyses
presented here draw heavily on methods described in detail
elsewhere (e.g. McSorley et al. in prep., Webb et
al. in press). This report aims to provide the results
of analyses in an accessible format to enable a rapid decision of
whether an SPA or SPAs should be classified in Liverpool Bay and
also to inform the issue of wind farm developments in Liverpool
Bay. A separate report based on these analyses recommends
options for boundaries for a possible SPA (Webb et al.
2004).