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Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

296 points by tfourb 3y ago

tfourb 3y ago
From the abstract: "We find that agricultural intensification, in particular pesticides and fertiliser use, is the main pressure for most bird population declines, especially for invertebrate feeders. Responses to changes in forest cover, urbanisation and temperature are more species-specific. Specifically, forest cover is associated with a positive effect and growing urbanisation with a negative effect on population dynamics, while temperature change has an effect on the dynamics of a large number of bird populations, the magnitude and direction of which depend on species' thermal preferences."
- anonzzzies 3y ago
  Here forests and trees in general are all cut so the farmers can do farming. Considering the amount of land that is changing into a deserts (which negatively affects the farmers too), it's a bit strange they keep cutting forest cover instead of subsidising maintaining and replanting.
  - immibis 3y ago
    One is substantially cheaper than the other. That means more profit. And if you don't maximize profit, you are the weakest firm, goodbye.
tfourb 3y ago
There are also quite convincing studies that show even worse declines for insect populations, again mostly due to industrialized farming techniques and the widespread use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The standard approach in the EU to work against this really worrying trend is to a) bring more and more land under some form of protection and remove it from agricultural production and b) increase the share of eco-farming, i.e. conventional farming without the chemistry. The problem: both approaches drastically reduce agricultural productivity. We really need a push towards regenerative agricultural practices (agroforestry, holistic grazing, etc.) that can deliver high yields while also improving CO2 sequestration and habitat creation.
- mattashii 3y ago
  > The problem: both approaches drastically reduce agricultural productivity That does not have to be an issue for the EU per se, as the EU is a net exporter of food in value, and potentially in calories as well.
  - masklinn 3y ago
    But a non-trivial amount of that is really intensive (one could say unnecessarily so) farming e.g. factory pig farming in the netherlands. And on the other hand, the revenue model tends to require this sort of practices, unless there’s room in (and you aim for) the more bougie distribution channels / outlets the hit is hard to absorb, especially the hit in reliability.
  - BelleOfTheBall 3y ago
    There's also the fact that we are developing new agricultural advancements constantly and I mean the collective we - vertical farms in Asia, new irrigation systems, lab-grown stuff and so on. Surely we can think of ways to improve agriculture while retaining our feathered friends
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > The problem: both approaches drastically reduce agricultural productivity. We're overproducing anyway, with massive environmental followup issues. Switching to less meat would free up a lot of grain production and help get nitrate runoff from all the poo used as fertilizer under control, but that's politically untenable and the markets would just adapt to import more Brazilian meat grown on burned-down rainforest farms.
  - runsWphotons 3y ago
    Is switching from meat to more grains better for birds? I strongly doubt that. Converting fields to planting fields is going to kill a lot more small mammals, birds, insects and so on?
    - 3y ago
taneq 3y ago
> Common bird time series in Europe have shown a general decline in abundance between 1980 and 2016 (−25.4% ± 2.8) In case anyone else was skimming through to find over what time period this occurred.
- jabiko 3y ago
  Thanks. It's always a bit annoying when someone throws around percentages of changes without giving the time frame.
  - Symbiote 3y ago
    The authors of the paper give the percentage right next to the time (as quoted), it's the submitter who has invented a new title.
- DrBazza 3y ago
  When I was a kid growing up in the London suburbs in the 70s and 80s I could remember flocks of all types of birds especially starlings and blackbirds being common place, and then, reading this article, it reminded me that I stopped seeing flocks. Even now, living outside London, I rarely see flocks of birds, and if I do, nowhere near as large as I remember, and I don't think its observer bias either.
faangguyindia 3y ago
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- emptyfile 3y ago
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- deleted 3y ago
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nologic01 3y ago
Birds had smart enough DNA to outlast the dinosaur era and conquer the sky but I wonder if they have smart enough DNA to survive the mammalian pest that has been unleashed on the planet.
- mschild 3y ago
  Theyll probably survive, but in what numbers and which types of birds is an entirely different story. Nevermind the massive impact that has on the environment in general.
- myshpa 3y ago
  Don't forget that elimination of sparrows in some regions in China led to a famine with millions dead. Elimination of bird predators like owls and hawks (caused by destruction of their environment and poisons by bad agriculture practices) leads to mice infestations. Civilizations can only function if they don't destroy their ecosystems. We have enough warning examples in the past, let's hope we'll be smarter this time.
kuschku 3y ago
This is why all those "don't have outdoor cats, they kill all the birds" stories annoy me. At best they're misguided, at worse they're intentionally misleading to hide the fact that pesticides and farming practices are actually at fault. (In Europe, on other continents the story may be different) Similar to the CO2 footprint, it's another way to individualize social issues and distract from large corporate sources of environmental destruction.
- winrid 3y ago
  Yeah, my understanding is the poor regulation of the emissions controls on container ships is huge.
- Y-bar 3y ago
  Precisely! The people reiterating that study also acts like it is valid all around the world, including places where cats are not invasive. For example in mainland and southern Europe the cat has been tamed since at least 1200 BC and the wild cat has been since the ice age. Birds in those areas have long since adapted, as evident by the wild cat which predominately hunts ground-dwelling mammals. It is of course a good argument to consider the study generally valid on e.g. the British isles and North America where the cat was more recently introduced into the fauna.
- msrenee 3y ago
  Ok, don't have outdoor cats because they live short lives with high risk of dying painfully. They definitely do stalk feeders and add to the stressors already in place for bird species. More than one thing can contribute to the reduction of bird populations.
  - nathan_compton 3y ago
    This seems nuts to me. Keeping a cat in an apartment its entire life is psychological torture and almost all the indoor only cats I've ever met are neurotic. If you don't want to let your cat move freely, I suggest just not having one.
nforgerit 3y ago
IIRC EUs farming regulations stem from 60s/70s and their only adaptations were intensification and market concentration. Some decade ago the sister of a small German farmer told me how EU laws were systematically pushing him out of the market forcing him to sell his ground to bigger competitors to avoid going bankrupt. You reap what you sow I guess
- megablast 3y ago
  Farmers have always been making excuses why they failed.
  - nforgerit 3y ago
    No it’s backed by some reports i’ve heard and read in the meantime. There’s no excuse but bitter results of BigFarm corps lobbying and politicians who incentivize the wrong things.
    - ZunarJ5 3y ago
      It's neoliberalism 101. It's how it functions.
  - zmgsabst 3y ago
    Dutch farmers are having their farms seized by globalists in their government right now. There’s a lot of corruption in farming.
  - brvsft 3y ago
    Did you mistake farmers for bankers?
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  I am not sure EU is the culprit. Firstly, EU has some of the smallest average farm size in developed economies - below 50 hectares, USA is close to 500. Secondly, the concerns around machines dominate farming. For exanple many studies have shown effectiveness of multicripping - growing severage different crips together. This will never take off, because muticropping fields are unharvestable - harvesters are specialised for grains, potatoes, etc. While they are hacesting one, they would damage / destroy another. Machine have become much larger, more sophisticared and more expensive. So many farmers don't own all the machines, they rent them or pay someome to d perform a job on their fields. Lastly, if you eant a decent existance, you need to generate enough revenue from your farm. Farms below 50cha can hardly support a family with the revenue they generate. The only way to save small farms is for them to diversify income - I knew a few farmers that installed wind turbines, etc. However UK planning system makes it impossible to get permission for a win turbine. In the past 5 years there were like 2 permissions given for any time of wind turbine in all of UK
deleted 3y ago
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unglaublich 3y ago
Whenever possible, buy Demeter products. Their approach to farming improves biodiversity and soil quality. https://demeter.net/biodynamics/biodiversity/ https://demeter.net/biodynamics/biodiversity/ > 35% more birds and 23% more insects are found in organic farmland thanks to the creation of natural habitats and the absence of chemical and synthetic pesticides. We, customers, vote with our shopping behavior. Yes, those products are 100-200% more expensive in terms of money. But don't forget that there is a huge price to pesticide use that is not passed through to the customer.
- arnoooooo 3y ago
  Biodynamics is complete hogwash. We do need labels for sustainable farming, but we need them to be based on science, not popular beliefs about moon phases and such things.
  - nforgerit 3y ago
    Agreed. Demeter is based on highly esoteric principles. Plus they've had an "interesting" relationship with the Nazi regime and obviously repeated their non-scientific weirdo theories in the Covid pandemic[0]. Personally, I only buy if I cannot avoid it. [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demeter_(Deutschland) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demeter_(Deutschland)
vitro 3y ago
Slightly off-topic, but because of farming we also started to have problem with mistletoe. Many small bushes of rose-hips, blackthorns and other food that birds usually eat disappeared because of smaller fields being merged to one, flattened. So what birds eat now is mistletoe, spreading it from tree to tree by wiping their beaks onto the bark of the tree, leaving mistletoe seeds there. To clear mistletoe from that many trees is fairly expensive so owners usually don't do it, and we have alleys and alleys of trees full of mistletoe. Eventually the tree dies because of mistletoe parasitizing it.
tourgen 3y ago
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atlantic 3y ago
This is anecdotal, but I see a lot of land that used to support birds and small animals and is now stripped of vegetation and covered in solar panels. Destroying habitats to save the planet is the order of the day, apparently.
- chris-orgmenta 3y ago
  This comment + the dovecote comment elsewhere makes me ponder whether solar will ever be part of crop rotation / intercropping / cover cropping. Mini nests/pigeonholes/etc could potentially be built into/under panels (though potential issues include predator access, + guano and other substances degrading equipment.) And/or solar panels could 'migrate' over time, plugging themselves into their nearest hub once they have moved themselves to a fallow / poor soil area. Fixed solar would always be more efficient, but perhaps migrating solar could one day have a niche position in soil science / ag, and allow solar to be position closer to cities. Anyway... all unlikely to be economical, I suppose.
boredhedgehog 3y ago
Why should I care about animals that have no use for me? Stories about wolves, bears, and now birds and insects, seem to presume that I feel some automatic emotional connection to them, or that there's some self-evident moral argument why they need to kept alive. I won't deny that they have some intrinsic value, but if there are competing interests and hidden costs, that value really needs to be put into perspective.
- eggsmediumrare 3y ago
  You live in nature. You might not be able to draw a straight line from bears to your quality of life, but everything is connected and if the rest of the web collapses, you will go with it.
- supriyo-biswas 3y ago
  Because birds and insects act as pollinators. Replicating natural, biological processes like that are difficult to replicate and most easily done by letting the natural process do its thing.
- Solvate8441 3y ago
  The consequences of killing birds and insects could be worse than the cost of keeping them around. That's what it boils down to. Knowing that, you just have to figure out if you think this is true for the things you value. You can try to figure this out yourself, or, if you think someone else could make a better judgement, see what they think. If the answer is "yes, perhaps the consequences of killing birds and insects could be worse than the cost of keeping them around for the things I value", then you should care.
the-dude 3y ago
I moved to the country side, right between the farmers, about a year ago. It is teaming with life here: insects, birds and bats.
- was_a_dev 3y ago
  Nice singular data point
  - the-dude 3y ago
    Thanks, I agree. Very nice.
Separo 3y ago
Anecdotal but I noticed in Portugal recently, in summer, over the course of two months, I saw pretty much no birds.
- cmilton 3y ago
  Just to add an another anecdotal view, here in the US, I have seen more birds than recent years. I attribute the increase in my area to the halting of mosquito spraying practices.
AbsoluteCabbage 3y ago
Is “farming to blame”, or is farming being blamed to suit an agenda? Don’t push ridiculous articles like this with zero factual evidence. What we put out to the world has real effects- especially dangerous rhetoric like this that incites the left side of the Bell curve into a frenzy.
- immibis 3y ago
  The agenda is preventing the extinction of human life.
  - AbsoluteCabbage 3y ago
    I’m pretty sure we need farming to continue existing as a species. Insane rhetoric like blaming cow farts on the end of the world will lead to the death of hundreds of millions due to starvation.
    - immibis 3y ago
      Cow farts are contributing to the end of the world, and that's a fact. Denying reality will lead to the death of billions due to starvation. Were you unaware there are other things you can eat besides cows? Did someone pay you to post this?
myshpa 3y ago
We could immediately reduce the negative impacts of farming by 75%, just by switching to plant based diets. https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets The industrial farming practices / propaganda making us reliant on overuse of poisons in our food chains makes us sick, is poisoing/destroying nature, destroying soil microbiomes, biodiversity, waters and air. We have to find ways to farm without poisons, and teach farmers to use those methods - it won't be easy and it won't change with one law and it will take maybe decades, but the methods exists, it's possible and should be done.
- Balero 3y ago
  The replacements for some of those poisons (large amounts of artificial fertilisers) are animal products. In a world without artificial fertiliser you need to have animals to produce fertiliser. The optimal for this would still be much less animal farming, and a massive shift in how and where it is done. But removing all animal products would be counter productive. (Perhaps this is what you meant by plant based though).
  - myshpa 3y ago
    > large amounts of artificial fertilisers Sure, but also pesti/herbicides. > without artificial fertiliser you need to have animals to produce fertiliser Or compost / nitrogen fixing / companion plants. > But removing all animal products would be counter productive There are people practicing it for decades pretty well without animal inputs. Syntropic agriculture (Ernst Götsch), natural farming (Masanobu Fukuoka), veganic farming, permaculture, hydroponics, animal-free biodynamic farming, etc. It's not a necessity.
bryanlarsen 3y ago
Probably the most exciting future technology is precision fermentation. We use massive amounts of land to grow monocultures because that's the cheapest way to produce food. We're in a conundrum: more expensive food would cause mass suffering. OTOH, our current food production methods are destructive, and cause mass suffering. A cheaper method to produce food that uses a lot less land and resources would be a game changer. Enter precision fermentation: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/24/green-technology-precision-fermentation-farming https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/24/green-...
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  If it's cheaper for more nutritious food, and every other aspect remains the same or better, then you won't need to convince anyone, it'll sell itself.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    I doubt there is anything which is more conservative and traditional than food. So even if its cheaper, more nutritious, better for the environment and tastes better, a lot of people will shun it and eat the same foods they've always eaten.
    - MichaelZuo 3y ago
      So what? As along as it's not literally 100% of the population, which I highly doubt, there should be more then enough customers to get a foothold.
juujian 3y ago
If you are the author, and you are in this thread: those graphs are stunning. Would have never thought to superimpose graphs over maps. But you folks made it work, and it's not just a gimmick, it provides information in a helpful and intuitive fashion.
NDizzle 3y ago
Ah yes, more guidance from Europe about getting rid of farms to save birds and stuff. Let's do that, and instead get rid of people. Cut exports, that's what everyone wants, right?
singularity2001 3y ago
These are very soft words for the ongoing biocide. If you look at animal farms and insecticide even a word as drastic as "animal holocaust" might be appropriate.
ciconia 3y ago
There are multiple factors causing the decline in bird population, but I'd like to focus on a single one: deforestation. Trees provide so many different functions for birds (as for other animals, and for humans too), both directly and indirectly: shelter, fruits, a cooling effect in summer, and most importantly, they act as an entire ecosystem for insects and caterpillars. You remove the tree, you remove the insects, and you remove caterpillars which are a staple food for baby birds. So yeah, deforestation + pesticides = less birds, and will lead to a desertification of Europe in more than one sense. But even in the desert you can find here and there an oasis, a place full of life where birdsong is just as vigorous as ever. There are still many places across Europe where this is happening, many oases (plural?) that teem with life, and bring happiness to the heart. In fact, this is not so difficult to do, just bring back the trees and the biodiversity, then the insects will return, and when the insects are there, birds will return. Build it and they will come. It is high time we change our agricultural practices from destructive to regenerative. The techniques are already well known, and pioneering work in this field of regenerative practices have been going on for decades already - from Yeomans, Molisson, and Holmgren in Australia to Fukuoka in Japan and Goetsch in Brasil, the knowledge is there. I live with my family on a small piece of land where we work to increase biodiversity and to reforest. Every year, birdsong gets louder and louder. I know it's possible and my garden is proof. Build it and they will come.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  Europe has a lot more trees today than it had 100 years ago.
  - have_faith 3y ago
    What makes 100 years ago a good point of reference? as opposed to a date pre-industrial revolution maybe.
    - ajsnigrutin 3y ago
      Because we didn't measure (count?) the number of birds then, and we've been noticing a decline in the last few decades.
jononomo 3y ago
In the old days, there were flocks of birds so large that they would blot out the sun, and the herds of bison were so large that it would take a week for a herd to walk by your campsite.
- asdff 3y ago
  As we get more control of the resources on this planet, the proportions of species measured in earths biomass will certainly change. For example, there are no more wild cattle in europe. There are actually more domestic cattle in europe than there were ever wild cattle, however. The calories to support that surplus of bovine has to come from somewhere in the environment, there is no free energy. More nutrients that would have otherwise gone towards other plants perhaps are used to grow foods for the cattle, and n-th order effects to the rest of the environment happen from there. You can't have 8 billion people generating a surplus of food without changes to the rest of the network of life's interactions.
  - jononomo 3y ago
    There is free energy from the Sun.
    - asdff 3y ago
      Its merely driving reactions, the amount of carbon on earth isn't changing. I guess it would be better for me to say there is no free mass.
jononomo 3y ago
We need to move away from agriculture as a means of food production and switch to becoming herders. Farming is an incredibly destructive practice. If we were all to switch to eating only meat, then we could get rid of farming entirely and raise billions of cattle for food instead, which would be far better for human health and longevity, as well as being a far more environmentally-sustainable approach to food production. I am in favor of using nuclear power to desalinate seawater in order to turn both the Sahara Desert and the Australian Desert into vast grasslands that can support billions of cattle, along with all the bugs and birds that such a regenerative approach would give rise to. We really need to get humanity off of plant-based food.
- contingencies 3y ago
  Large scale terraforming does not have a history of success and is broadly associated with authoritarian governments.
timwaagh 3y ago
Farming does a heck of a lot worse damage than 'a decline in bird populations'. What causes such decline in wild animal populations and causes damage to humans is that farming takes up all the available room driving both animals and humans away. I would rather see the farmer being free to sell their lands to housing developers or build on it instead of the current level of masochism with considerations like autarky and tradition being dominant. Presumably a lot would go for it. Farmer happy, people happy. Probably birds happier too. We will help to ensure Ukraine wins that war and afterwards it can sell us food. Or Africa. Or wherever, really. Europe has better things to do.
- pkphilip 3y ago
  What do you think is going to happen if farmers start selling their land for building residences and offices? where do you think your food is going to come from? Corporate farms? do you seriously think corporate farms are going to be carrying more for the environment than farming families?
  - timwaagh 3y ago
    I think they might actually now that you mentioned it. In the same way h&m has a better policy than most locally owned clothing stores. Families typically face immense pressure to only think about the short term. But it wasn't what I was thinking of. But like I said the food produced by land that is urbanized would have to be imported. But that is not a bad thing. It will be very good for developing nations.
    - pkphilip 3y ago
      Not producing food locally and being dependent on imports for even basic food supplies is actually even more dangerous than being dependent on other countries for stuff such as electricity. Plus consider the huge amount of energy needed to transport food crops across the globe. Another question worth thinking about - what landscape pollutes the air/water/land more? is it farm land or the cities?
- dmreedy 3y ago
Haga 3y ago
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j0057 3y ago
> Considering both the overwhelming negative impact of agricultural intensification and the homogenization introduced by temperature and land-use changes, our results suggest that the fate of common European bird populations depends on the rapid implementation of transformative change in European societies, and especially in agricultural reform. The chance of transformative change like that happening in the Netherlands anytime soon is 0%. BBB has won big in provincial politics and they will be able to stall or vote down any policy that isn't beneficial to the few big agro firms for the coming years.
mvdl 3y ago
Is there a reason windturbine effects on bird decline are not used in this study?
asdff 3y ago
Europe is a double whammy then for bird populations. The first thing you notice traveling around many european cities is ostensibly there are no spay and neuter programs (or they must be totally ineffective) for the thousands of stray cats that clad each and every rooftop and loiter around every park and street. For some places like Istanbul the overabundance is a point of pride or a tourist attraction in its own right. It's hard to imagine there are any birds at all in these cities with the bulk of the calories in the environment seemingly being held at the small game predator level, which is sustained at a higher level than the available prey can even support thanks to stuff like restaurant dumpsters or people feeding the cute little killing machines directly.

296 points by tfourb 3y ago

From the abstract: "We find that agricultural intensification, in particular pesticides and fertiliser use, is the main pressure for most bird population declines, especially for invertebrate feeders. Responses to changes in forest cover, urbanisation and temperature are more species-specific. Specifically, forest cover is associated with a positive effect and growing urbanisation with a negative effect on population dynamics, while temperature change has an effect on the dynamics of a large number of bird populations, the magnitude and direction of which depend on species' thermal preferences."

anonzzzies 3y ago
Here forests and trees in general are all cut so the farmers can do farming. Considering the amount of land that is changing into a deserts (which negatively affects the farmers too), it's a bit strange they keep cutting forest cover instead of subsidising maintaining and replanting.
- immibis 3y ago
  One is substantially cheaper than the other. That means more profit. And if you don't maximize profit, you are the weakest firm, goodbye.

tfourb 3y ago

There are also quite convincing studies that show even worse declines for insect populations, again mostly due to industrialized farming techniques and the widespread use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The standard approach in the EU to work against this really worrying trend is to a) bring more and more land under some form of protection and remove it from agricultural production and b) increase the share of eco-farming, i.e. conventional farming without the chemistry. The problem: both approaches drastically reduce agricultural productivity. We really need a push towards regenerative agricultural practices (agroforestry, holistic grazing, etc.) that can deliver high yields while also improving CO2 sequestration and habitat creation.

mattashii 3y ago
> The problem: both approaches drastically reduce agricultural productivity That does not have to be an issue for the EU per se, as the EU is a net exporter of food in value, and potentially in calories as well.
- masklinn 3y ago
  But a non-trivial amount of that is really intensive (one could say unnecessarily so) farming e.g. factory pig farming in the netherlands. And on the other hand, the revenue model tends to require this sort of practices, unless there’s room in (and you aim for) the more bougie distribution channels / outlets the hit is hard to absorb, especially the hit in reliability.
- BelleOfTheBall 3y ago
  There's also the fact that we are developing new agricultural advancements constantly and I mean the collective we - vertical farms in Asia, new irrigation systems, lab-grown stuff and so on. Surely we can think of ways to improve agriculture while retaining our feathered friends
mschuster91 3y ago
> The problem: both approaches drastically reduce agricultural productivity. We're overproducing anyway, with massive environmental followup issues. Switching to less meat would free up a lot of grain production and help get nitrate runoff from all the poo used as fertilizer under control, but that's politically untenable and the markets would just adapt to import more Brazilian meat grown on burned-down rainforest farms.
- runsWphotons 3y ago
  Is switching from meat to more grains better for birds? I strongly doubt that. Converting fields to planting fields is going to kill a lot more small mammals, birds, insects and so on?
  - 3y ago

taneq 3y ago

> Common bird time series in Europe have shown a general decline in abundance between 1980 and 2016 (−25.4% ± 2.8) In case anyone else was skimming through to find over what time period this occurred.

jabiko 3y ago
Thanks. It's always a bit annoying when someone throws around percentages of changes without giving the time frame.
- Symbiote 3y ago
  The authors of the paper give the percentage right next to the time (as quoted), it's the submitter who has invented a new title.
DrBazza 3y ago
When I was a kid growing up in the London suburbs in the 70s and 80s I could remember flocks of all types of birds especially starlings and blackbirds being common place, and then, reading this article, it reminded me that I stopped seeing flocks. Even now, living outside London, I rarely see flocks of birds, and if I do, nowhere near as large as I remember, and I don't think its observer bias either.

faangguyindia 3y ago

[flagged]

emptyfile 3y ago
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deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

nologic01 3y ago

Birds had smart enough DNA to outlast the dinosaur era and conquer the sky but I wonder if they have smart enough DNA to survive the mammalian pest that has been unleashed on the planet.

mschild 3y ago
Theyll probably survive, but in what numbers and which types of birds is an entirely different story. Nevermind the massive impact that has on the environment in general.
myshpa 3y ago
Don't forget that elimination of sparrows in some regions in China led to a famine with millions dead. Elimination of bird predators like owls and hawks (caused by destruction of their environment and poisons by bad agriculture practices) leads to mice infestations. Civilizations can only function if they don't destroy their ecosystems. We have enough warning examples in the past, let's hope we'll be smarter this time.

kuschku 3y ago

This is why all those "don't have outdoor cats, they kill all the birds" stories annoy me. At best they're misguided, at worse they're intentionally misleading to hide the fact that pesticides and farming practices are actually at fault. (In Europe, on other continents the story may be different) Similar to the CO2 footprint, it's another way to individualize social issues and distract from large corporate sources of environmental destruction.

winrid 3y ago
Yeah, my understanding is the poor regulation of the emissions controls on container ships is huge.
Y-bar 3y ago
Precisely! The people reiterating that study also acts like it is valid all around the world, including places where cats are not invasive. For example in mainland and southern Europe the cat has been tamed since at least 1200 BC and the wild cat has been since the ice age. Birds in those areas have long since adapted, as evident by the wild cat which predominately hunts ground-dwelling mammals. It is of course a good argument to consider the study generally valid on e.g. the British isles and North America where the cat was more recently introduced into the fauna.
msrenee 3y ago
Ok, don't have outdoor cats because they live short lives with high risk of dying painfully. They definitely do stalk feeders and add to the stressors already in place for bird species. More than one thing can contribute to the reduction of bird populations.
- nathan_compton 3y ago
  This seems nuts to me. Keeping a cat in an apartment its entire life is psychological torture and almost all the indoor only cats I've ever met are neurotic. If you don't want to let your cat move freely, I suggest just not having one.

nforgerit 3y ago

IIRC EUs farming regulations stem from 60s/70s and their only adaptations were intensification and market concentration. Some decade ago the sister of a small German farmer told me how EU laws were systematically pushing him out of the market forcing him to sell his ground to bigger competitors to avoid going bankrupt. You reap what you sow I guess

megablast 3y ago
Farmers have always been making excuses why they failed.
- nforgerit 3y ago
  No it’s backed by some reports i’ve heard and read in the meantime. There’s no excuse but bitter results of BigFarm corps lobbying and politicians who incentivize the wrong things.
  - ZunarJ5 3y ago
    It's neoliberalism 101. It's how it functions.
- zmgsabst 3y ago
  Dutch farmers are having their farms seized by globalists in their government right now. There’s a lot of corruption in farming.
- brvsft 3y ago
  Did you mistake farmers for bankers?
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
I am not sure EU is the culprit. Firstly, EU has some of the smallest average farm size in developed economies - below 50 hectares, USA is close to 500. Secondly, the concerns around machines dominate farming. For exanple many studies have shown effectiveness of multicripping - growing severage different crips together. This will never take off, because muticropping fields are unharvestable - harvesters are specialised for grains, potatoes, etc. While they are hacesting one, they would damage / destroy another. Machine have become much larger, more sophisticared and more expensive. So many farmers don't own all the machines, they rent them or pay someome to d perform a job on their fields. Lastly, if you eant a decent existance, you need to generate enough revenue from your farm. Farms below 50cha can hardly support a family with the revenue they generate. The only way to save small farms is for them to diversify income - I knew a few farmers that installed wind turbines, etc. However UK planning system makes it impossible to get permission for a win turbine. In the past 5 years there were like 2 permissions given for any time of wind turbine in all of UK

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unglaublich 3y ago

Whenever possible, buy Demeter products. Their approach to farming improves biodiversity and soil quality. https://demeter.net/biodynamics/biodiversity/ https://demeter.net/biodynamics/biodiversity/ > 35% more birds and 23% more insects are found in organic farmland thanks to the creation of natural habitats and the absence of chemical and synthetic pesticides. We, customers, vote with our shopping behavior. Yes, those products are 100-200% more expensive in terms of money. But don't forget that there is a huge price to pesticide use that is not passed through to the customer.

arnoooooo 3y ago
Biodynamics is complete hogwash. We do need labels for sustainable farming, but we need them to be based on science, not popular beliefs about moon phases and such things.
- nforgerit 3y ago
  Agreed. Demeter is based on highly esoteric principles. Plus they've had an "interesting" relationship with the Nazi regime and obviously repeated their non-scientific weirdo theories in the Covid pandemic[0]. Personally, I only buy if I cannot avoid it. [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demeter_(Deutschland) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demeter_(Deutschland)

vitro 3y ago

Slightly off-topic, but because of farming we also started to have problem with mistletoe. Many small bushes of rose-hips, blackthorns and other food that birds usually eat disappeared because of smaller fields being merged to one, flattened. So what birds eat now is mistletoe, spreading it from tree to tree by wiping their beaks onto the bark of the tree, leaving mistletoe seeds there. To clear mistletoe from that many trees is fairly expensive so owners usually don't do it, and we have alleys and alleys of trees full of mistletoe. Eventually the tree dies because of mistletoe parasitizing it.

tourgen 3y ago

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atlantic 3y ago

This is anecdotal, but I see a lot of land that used to support birds and small animals and is now stripped of vegetation and covered in solar panels. Destroying habitats to save the planet is the order of the day, apparently.

chris-orgmenta 3y ago
This comment + the dovecote comment elsewhere makes me ponder whether solar will ever be part of crop rotation / intercropping / cover cropping. Mini nests/pigeonholes/etc could potentially be built into/under panels (though potential issues include predator access, + guano and other substances degrading equipment.) And/or solar panels could 'migrate' over time, plugging themselves into their nearest hub once they have moved themselves to a fallow / poor soil area. Fixed solar would always be more efficient, but perhaps migrating solar could one day have a niche position in soil science / ag, and allow solar to be position closer to cities. Anyway... all unlikely to be economical, I suppose.

boredhedgehog 3y ago

Why should I care about animals that have no use for me? Stories about wolves, bears, and now birds and insects, seem to presume that I feel some automatic emotional connection to them, or that there's some self-evident moral argument why they need to kept alive. I won't deny that they have some intrinsic value, but if there are competing interests and hidden costs, that value really needs to be put into perspective.

eggsmediumrare 3y ago
You live in nature. You might not be able to draw a straight line from bears to your quality of life, but everything is connected and if the rest of the web collapses, you will go with it.
supriyo-biswas 3y ago
Because birds and insects act as pollinators. Replicating natural, biological processes like that are difficult to replicate and most easily done by letting the natural process do its thing.
Solvate8441 3y ago
The consequences of killing birds and insects could be worse than the cost of keeping them around. That's what it boils down to. Knowing that, you just have to figure out if you think this is true for the things you value. You can try to figure this out yourself, or, if you think someone else could make a better judgement, see what they think. If the answer is "yes, perhaps the consequences of killing birds and insects could be worse than the cost of keeping them around for the things I value", then you should care.

the-dude 3y ago

I moved to the country side, right between the farmers, about a year ago. It is teaming with life here: insects, birds and bats.

was_a_dev 3y ago
Nice singular data point
- the-dude 3y ago
  Thanks, I agree. Very nice.

Separo 3y ago

Anecdotal but I noticed in Portugal recently, in summer, over the course of two months, I saw pretty much no birds.

cmilton 3y ago
Just to add an another anecdotal view, here in the US, I have seen more birds than recent years. I attribute the increase in my area to the halting of mosquito spraying practices.

AbsoluteCabbage 3y ago

Is “farming to blame”, or is farming being blamed to suit an agenda? Don’t push ridiculous articles like this with zero factual evidence. What we put out to the world has real effects- especially dangerous rhetoric like this that incites the left side of the Bell curve into a frenzy.

immibis 3y ago
The agenda is preventing the extinction of human life.
- AbsoluteCabbage 3y ago
  I’m pretty sure we need farming to continue existing as a species. Insane rhetoric like blaming cow farts on the end of the world will lead to the death of hundreds of millions due to starvation.
  - immibis 3y ago
    Cow farts are contributing to the end of the world, and that's a fact. Denying reality will lead to the death of billions due to starvation. Were you unaware there are other things you can eat besides cows? Did someone pay you to post this?

myshpa 3y ago

We could immediately reduce the negative impacts of farming by 75%, just by switching to plant based diets. https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets The industrial farming practices / propaganda making us reliant on overuse of poisons in our food chains makes us sick, is poisoing/destroying nature, destroying soil microbiomes, biodiversity, waters and air. We have to find ways to farm without poisons, and teach farmers to use those methods - it won't be easy and it won't change with one law and it will take maybe decades, but the methods exists, it's possible and should be done.

Balero 3y ago
The replacements for some of those poisons (large amounts of artificial fertilisers) are animal products. In a world without artificial fertiliser you need to have animals to produce fertiliser. The optimal for this would still be much less animal farming, and a massive shift in how and where it is done. But removing all animal products would be counter productive. (Perhaps this is what you meant by plant based though).
- myshpa 3y ago
  > large amounts of artificial fertilisers Sure, but also pesti/herbicides. > without artificial fertiliser you need to have animals to produce fertiliser Or compost / nitrogen fixing / companion plants. > But removing all animal products would be counter productive There are people practicing it for decades pretty well without animal inputs. Syntropic agriculture (Ernst Götsch), natural farming (Masanobu Fukuoka), veganic farming, permaculture, hydroponics, animal-free biodynamic farming, etc. It's not a necessity.

bryanlarsen 3y ago

Probably the most exciting future technology is precision fermentation. We use massive amounts of land to grow monocultures because that's the cheapest way to produce food. We're in a conundrum: more expensive food would cause mass suffering. OTOH, our current food production methods are destructive, and cause mass suffering. A cheaper method to produce food that uses a lot less land and resources would be a game changer. Enter precision fermentation: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/24/green-technology-precision-fermentation-farming https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/24/green-...

MichaelZuo 3y ago
If it's cheaper for more nutritious food, and every other aspect remains the same or better, then you won't need to convince anyone, it'll sell itself.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  I doubt there is anything which is more conservative and traditional than food. So even if its cheaper, more nutritious, better for the environment and tastes better, a lot of people will shun it and eat the same foods they've always eaten.
  - MichaelZuo 3y ago
    So what? As along as it's not literally 100% of the population, which I highly doubt, there should be more then enough customers to get a foothold.

juujian 3y ago

If you are the author, and you are in this thread: those graphs are stunning. Would have never thought to superimpose graphs over maps. But you folks made it work, and it's not just a gimmick, it provides information in a helpful and intuitive fashion.

NDizzle 3y ago

Ah yes, more guidance from Europe about getting rid of farms to save birds and stuff. Let's do that, and instead get rid of people. Cut exports, that's what everyone wants, right?

singularity2001 3y ago

These are very soft words for the ongoing biocide. If you look at animal farms and insecticide even a word as drastic as "animal holocaust" might be appropriate.

ciconia 3y ago

There are multiple factors causing the decline in bird population, but I'd like to focus on a single one: deforestation. Trees provide so many different functions for birds (as for other animals, and for humans too), both directly and indirectly: shelter, fruits, a cooling effect in summer, and most importantly, they act as an entire ecosystem for insects and caterpillars. You remove the tree, you remove the insects, and you remove caterpillars which are a staple food for baby birds. So yeah, deforestation + pesticides = less birds, and will lead to a desertification of Europe in more than one sense. But even in the desert you can find here and there an oasis, a place full of life where birdsong is just as vigorous as ever. There are still many places across Europe where this is happening, many oases (plural?) that teem with life, and bring happiness to the heart. In fact, this is not so difficult to do, just bring back the trees and the biodiversity, then the insects will return, and when the insects are there, birds will return. Build it and they will come. It is high time we change our agricultural practices from destructive to regenerative. The techniques are already well known, and pioneering work in this field of regenerative practices have been going on for decades already - from Yeomans, Molisson, and Holmgren in Australia to Fukuoka in Japan and Goetsch in Brasil, the knowledge is there. I live with my family on a small piece of land where we work to increase biodiversity and to reforest. Every year, birdsong gets louder and louder. I know it's possible and my garden is proof. Build it and they will come.

bryanlarsen 3y ago
Europe has a lot more trees today than it had 100 years ago.
- have_faith 3y ago
  What makes 100 years ago a good point of reference? as opposed to a date pre-industrial revolution maybe.
  - ajsnigrutin 3y ago
    Because we didn't measure (count?) the number of birds then, and we've been noticing a decline in the last few decades.

jononomo 3y ago

In the old days, there were flocks of birds so large that they would blot out the sun, and the herds of bison were so large that it would take a week for a herd to walk by your campsite.

asdff 3y ago
As we get more control of the resources on this planet, the proportions of species measured in earths biomass will certainly change. For example, there are no more wild cattle in europe. There are actually more domestic cattle in europe than there were ever wild cattle, however. The calories to support that surplus of bovine has to come from somewhere in the environment, there is no free energy. More nutrients that would have otherwise gone towards other plants perhaps are used to grow foods for the cattle, and n-th order effects to the rest of the environment happen from there. You can't have 8 billion people generating a surplus of food without changes to the rest of the network of life's interactions.
- jononomo 3y ago
  There is free energy from the Sun.
  - asdff 3y ago
    Its merely driving reactions, the amount of carbon on earth isn't changing. I guess it would be better for me to say there is no free mass.

jononomo 3y ago

We need to move away from agriculture as a means of food production and switch to becoming herders. Farming is an incredibly destructive practice. If we were all to switch to eating only meat, then we could get rid of farming entirely and raise billions of cattle for food instead, which would be far better for human health and longevity, as well as being a far more environmentally-sustainable approach to food production. I am in favor of using nuclear power to desalinate seawater in order to turn both the Sahara Desert and the Australian Desert into vast grasslands that can support billions of cattle, along with all the bugs and birds that such a regenerative approach would give rise to. We really need to get humanity off of plant-based food.

contingencies 3y ago
Large scale terraforming does not have a history of success and is broadly associated with authoritarian governments.

timwaagh 3y ago

Farming does a heck of a lot worse damage than 'a decline in bird populations'. What causes such decline in wild animal populations and causes damage to humans is that farming takes up all the available room driving both animals and humans away. I would rather see the farmer being free to sell their lands to housing developers or build on it instead of the current level of masochism with considerations like autarky and tradition being dominant. Presumably a lot would go for it. Farmer happy, people happy. Probably birds happier too. We will help to ensure Ukraine wins that war and afterwards it can sell us food. Or Africa. Or wherever, really. Europe has better things to do.

pkphilip 3y ago
What do you think is going to happen if farmers start selling their land for building residences and offices? where do you think your food is going to come from? Corporate farms? do you seriously think corporate farms are going to be carrying more for the environment than farming families?
- timwaagh 3y ago
  I think they might actually now that you mentioned it. In the same way h&m has a better policy than most locally owned clothing stores. Families typically face immense pressure to only think about the short term. But it wasn't what I was thinking of. But like I said the food produced by land that is urbanized would have to be imported. But that is not a bad thing. It will be very good for developing nations.
  - pkphilip 3y ago
    Not producing food locally and being dependent on imports for even basic food supplies is actually even more dangerous than being dependent on other countries for stuff such as electricity. Plus consider the huge amount of energy needed to transport food crops across the globe. Another question worth thinking about - what landscape pollutes the air/water/land more? is it farm land or the cities?
dmreedy 3y ago

Haga 3y ago

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j0057 3y ago

> Considering both the overwhelming negative impact of agricultural intensification and the homogenization introduced by temperature and land-use changes, our results suggest that the fate of common European bird populations depends on the rapid implementation of transformative change in European societies, and especially in agricultural reform. The chance of transformative change like that happening in the Netherlands anytime soon is 0%. BBB has won big in provincial politics and they will be able to stall or vote down any policy that isn't beneficial to the few big agro firms for the coming years.

mvdl 3y ago

Is there a reason windturbine effects on bird decline are not used in this study?

asdff 3y ago

Europe is a double whammy then for bird populations. The first thing you notice traveling around many european cities is ostensibly there are no spay and neuter programs (or they must be totally ineffective) for the thousands of stray cats that clad each and every rooftop and loiter around every park and street. For some places like Istanbul the overabundance is a point of pride or a tourist attraction in its own right. It's hard to imagine there are any birds at all in these cities with the bulk of the calories in the environment seemingly being held at the small game predator level, which is sustained at a higher level than the available prey can even support thanks to stuff like restaurant dumpsters or people feeding the cute little killing machines directly.