Status
The Red-billed Chough has an extensive range, estimated at 10 million square kilometres (3.8 million sq mi), and a large population, including an estimated 86,000 to 210,000 individuals in Europe. Over its range as a whole, the species is not believed to approach the thresholds for the global population decline criterion of the IUCN Red List (i.e., declining more than 30% in ten years or three generations), and is therefore evaluated as Least Concern.
However, the European range has declined and fragmented due to the loss of traditional pastoral farming, persecution and perhaps disturbance at breeding and nesting sites, although the numbers in France, Great Britain and Ireland may now have stabilised. The European breeding population is between 12,265–17,370 pairs, but only in Spain is the species still widespread. Since in the rest of the continent breeding areas are fragmented and isolated, the Red-billed Chough has been categorised as "vulnerable" in Europe.
In Spain, the Red-billed Chough has recently expanded its range by utilising old buildings, with 1,175 breeding pairs in a 9,716 square kilometre (3,692 sq mi) study area. These new breeding areas usually surround the original montane core areas. However, the populations with nest sites on buildings are threatened by human disturbance, persecution and the loss of old buildings. Fossils of both chough species were found in the mountains of the Canary Islands. The local extinction of the Alpine Chough and the reduced range of Red-billed Chough in the islands may have been due to climate change or human activity.
A small group of wild Red-billed Chough arrived naturally in Cornwall in 2001, and nested in the following year. This was the first English breeding record since 1947, and a slowly expanding population has bred every subsequent year.
In Jersey, the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, in partnership with the States of Jersey and the National Trust for Jersey began a project in 2010, aimed at restoring selected areas of Jersey’s coastline with the intention of returning those birds that had become locally extinct. The Red-billed Chough was chosen as a flagship species for this project, having been absent from Jersey since around 1900. Durrell initially received two pairs of choughs from Paradise Park in Cornwall and began a captive breeding programme. In 2012, the Red-billed Choughs were living free in the central valley area of Durrell Wildlife Park, and the Trust expects colonisation of the coastal areas of Jersey in the following years.
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