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Peer Review

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Executive summary
The Corncrake is considered ‘near threatened’ worldwide. It is included in Annex I of the EU Bird
Directive, Appendix II of the Bern Convention and Appendix II of the Bonn Convention. Corncrakes
breed widely across Eurasia, from the Atlantic to western Siberia. The core wintering area is situated
in the savannas and other grasslands in eastern and south-eastern Africa. The global population is
estimated to number 1.7 to 3.5 million singing males, including estimates for countries where
complete national surveys are not feasible. Due to the lack of sufficient data, trends are rather poorly
known in many (important) countries in the breeding range, especially in eastern Europe and Asia.
Based on new information from these countries, the species recently has been downlisted from
‘globally threatened’ to ‘near threatened’. Available data on trends suggest declines of 20-50% in the
recent decades in large parts of the breeding range, most pronounced in western European countries.
From the mid-1990s onwards, however, several countries have reported increases.