UK farmers’ habitat work lifts corn buntings 346% and butterflies 183%

Since 1967, corn buntings have declined by 83% in the UK. But over the decade, the bird population around Martin Down, on the Hampshire-Dorset border, has risen by 346%.The red-listed bird is not the only one to benefit. Grey partridges in the same cluster are up 147%. Butterfly abundance has climbed 183%. Turtle doves, barn owls, swifts, harvest mice and brown hares have all benefited. And it has happened on working farmland, run by the farmers and estates that make up the Martin Down Farmer Cluster, at a time when the wider countryside keeps losing species. How? Well, farmers came together, created flower margins and water scrapes, and the neighbouring farms work together to connect these habitats across their land.Two self-funded Farmer Clusters in Hampshire, Dorset and Wiltshire have recorded substantial increases in several farmland species over 10 years of monitoring.