Contents
Background
Through the publication of the recent breeding seabird census, Seabirds Count, and the UK Marine Strategy Part 1 assessment. it is clear seabirds in the UK are facing a multitude of pressures affecting their populations. As a result, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales have published individual country seabird conservation strategies, action plans or recovery pathways. Each of these highlight the current knowledge, and subsequent evidence needs to adequately understand seabird/pressure interactions and to develop and implement meaningful conservation action for seabirds.
There is inevitably going to be commonality between the pressures facing seabirds and actions required to address these across each of the countries. Where this is the case a collaborative UK approach to filling evidence gaps could be beneficial so to facilitate a strategic approach to evidence gathering and gap filling JNCC formed the Seabird Conservation UK Advisory Science (SCUAS) Forum.
Purpose
The purpose of SCUAS Forum is to draw on the expertise of seabird scientists and conservation and policy specialists to discuss, highlight and prioritise key evidence needs within applied seabird conservation science at a UK scale.
The overall objectives of SCUAS are to:
- Take a collaborative approach to prioritise important pressures at a UK scale for seabirds.
- Collectively produce a list of priority research and evidence gathering questions/ project ideas to plug knowledge gaps to address these pressures.
- Highlight funding opportunities for these priority areas.
- Produce reports outlining the results of the above work.
Outputs
In November 2025, the SCUAS Forum held its inaugural meeting, with JNCC chairing an all-day in-person workshop in Edinburgh. The output was an initial, unrefined list of priority areas of research or evidence needs that would support seabird conservation in the UK. These are presented in a report along with a description of the workshop proceedings (in preparation).
Following from this workshop, an inter-sessional meeting was held between the statutory nature conservation bodies and government department members of the forum to further refine the priorities highlighted to ensure they aligned with policy needs and direct conservation actions.
In October 2026, the forum will meet again to co-design concise concept notes for a selection of the priorities identified.
Membership
Organisations currently represented on SCUAS are:
- British Trust for Ornithology (BTO)
- Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)
- Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs of NI (DAERA)
- Herriot Watt University
- Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC)
- SLR Consulting Limited (formerly MacArthur Green)
- Marine Directorate, Scottish Government
- National Trust (NT)
- National Trust for Scotland (NTS)
- Natural England (NE)
- Natural Resources Wales (NRW)
- NatureScot
- Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB)
- The Seabird Group
- UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH)
- University College London
- University of Gloucestershire
- University of Lancaster
- University of Liverpool
Membership is not exclusive to those above and new members can be added or suggested at any time.
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