IT’S our most famous native bird – but it will be extinct in just a few years, experts have warned.
For just four breeding pairs of curlew have been found in a survey of Donegal.
Shocked investigators went to 60 sites in the hope of finding more of the birds.
But they found just four pairs in Donegal – and four in Mayo.
The study was carried out earlier this year by BirdWatch Ireland as part of a European Union-funded curlew conservation project in the Border counties.
It suggests there are likely fewer than 200 breeding pairs left in the whole of Ireland, a shocking 96 per cent decline in just 20 years.
“The marginal upland areas where curlews breed have been widely destroyed or fragmented by a range of land-use pressures,” curlew conservation project manager for BirdWatch Ireland, Anita Donaghy, said.
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