Curlew Country is a small independent not-for-profit organisation. It raises all of its income independently. Curlew Country started out as one of multiple projects within the Stiperstones and Corndon Hill Country Landscape Partnership Scheme, hosted by the Shropshire Hills AONB. When the scheme ended the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust kindly agreed to take over hosting arrangements.

Hosting enables Curlew Country to continue to operate independently given the much smaller scale of focus and funding in comparison to larger organisations.

The Curlew Country core area is a hotspot for curlew. There are only a handful of curlew populations of this size (around 40 pairs) outside upland managed moors and reserves. This nationally significant population of pastoral hill farms and intervening valleys and dales, was once ubiquitous in Shropshire. A decline from around 700 pairs in 1990 to around 160 pairs in 2010 represents a catastrophic 77% decline in this time. Thankfully we are seeing signs that this has slowed since the project’s inception, however there remains a high risk that without great investment into habitat creation and improvement that the short-term interventions aimed at breeding success will not be enough to prevent local extinction. The main drivers have been identified as habitat loss and degradation, as well as increased abundance of generalist predators in the landscape leading to high rates of predation of nests and chicks.