8 ms·

Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe (2023)

164 points by johntfella 3y ago

Roark66 3y ago
Putting the entirety of Europe into one basket of "farmland practices" is really not a correct way to approach this. There are countries that have lots of tiny farmers, there are countries that have small number of huge farms. Practices between the two are hugely different. Also in the east where cost of living is much lower many farmers don't do farming (like my neighbours) but they "keep land culture" for which they are paid by the EU. This means essentially mowing the hay twice a year and doing nothing else. One of my farmer neighbours plants his fields every year, for his bees to make hone from a particular plant he wants honey from. He doesn't even collect the results, he just mows it back into the earth. Then there is the amount of woodland area. Compare my country Poland that has over 30% of its area as woodlands and growing with Netherlands(not picking on Netherlands, it is better in other ways). You can't. And their map really shows it. So making a statement like "overall decline of bird species due to farming practices across Europe" is just untrue. I'd love to see some sort of comparison of which farming practices specifically cause which bird populations to decline. Perhaps then we can adapt these tgat work better.
- ImAnAmateur 3y ago
  Three of the 51 authors are from Poland. There are breakdowns by country and also comparisons of forest cover, urbanization, and temperature. There's a button that lets you look at the pictures if you want an easy country overview.
- veddox 3y ago
  Your first point is partly correct, but your conclusion isn't. The authors split up their results by country to show exactly the differences you mention. However, you have to keep in mind that the EU Common Agricultural Policy applies to all these countries, and actively promotes large-scale intensive agriculture. Bird collapses after a country joins the EU have been shown, for example in the Czech Republic [1]. So yes, while the magnitude may vary, the negative trend is a Europe-wide phenomenon. There's also been a lot of research done on what aspects of farming cause declines [2]. It's partly species-specific, but the three major causes are: loss of semi-natural habitat area (e.g. hedges, fallows), disturbance mortality (e.g. from harvesting), and pesticides (often mediated through the loss of insects as food source). [1] https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12585 https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12585 [2] e.g. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959270919000480 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959270919000480, https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.14400 https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.14400, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13531 https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13531, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2003.06.004 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2003.06.004
  - ExoticPearTree 3y ago
    The real danger I think is in the decrease of insect population. Anecdotally, 15-20 years ago, a longer trip throughout the country (2-400km) the windshield would be littered with dead insects, now very very few insects hit the windshield. Is there a study about the effects of decreased pollination?
    - veddox 3y ago
      > The real danger I think is in the decrease of insect population. That is certainly one of the most important issues. However, habitat loss is even more critical (not only but also because it also decreases insect numbers). > Is there a study about the effects of decreased pollination? Pollination and other ecosystem services have been heavily studied in the last decade. Putting precise numbers on it is tricky though, because there are so many context-specific factors that play a role. However, this is one important global study that shows a clear effect of pollination on yield: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aax0121 https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aax0121
    - cookingmyserver 3y ago
      I used to think the same thing until I started riding a motorcycle. I quickly came to the realization that the primary reason I was seeing less insects on my windshield was because of improved aerodynamics. I am sure that there has also been a major decline in insect population as well though contributing to it.
  - hellgas00 3y ago
    Can you elaborate if possible on the comment made about the EU Common Agricultural Policy's effects of promoting large scale intensive agriculture. Specifically what policy attributes support it.
    - veddox 3y ago
      Principally the direct payments. Farmers in the EU get a certain amount of money for every hectare of land they farm. This accounts for 40% of all CAP payments, and disproportionately benefits large farms, as they not only get much more money but also benefit from economies of scale. Adding to that, compulsory environmental regulations are quite lax, while voluntary environmental measures are often poorly recompensed, and are thus economically not viable. See here for some further reading: https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10080 https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10080 (There's lots more, but this should be a good starting point.)
moby_click 3y ago
It would be interesting, to also compare the output of farmland practices. If higher input leads to higher output, demand can be met with less land. Here is one example of that tradeoff: "Scale-dependent effectiveness of on-field vs. off-field agri-environmental measures for wild bees" - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1439179122000408 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S143917912... Different species and crops may yield different results.
- veddox 3y ago
  > If higher input leads to higher output, demand can be met with less land. That is a big debate in conservation biology (known as "land sparing vs land sharing"). One of the major problems of the land sparing approach, which you outline above, is that there is nothing that makes (at least European) farmers as upset as the requirement to give up farming on part of their land. So while it's neat in principle, many conservationists doubt its political practicability.
  - jgraham 3y ago
    I don't disagree with you, but to give a bit of colour to the counterargument, as I understand it, we now have maybe 5 decades of experience which suggests that the "sharing" approach doesn't work at scale. In general, if you want to see wildlife in western Europe you go to a nature reserve, not a farm, because "spared" land will have nature but "shared" land increasingly won't. Of course there are some individual farmers who are doing great work and bucking that trend, but so far no one has found a magic formula that allows land to both be subject to intensive agriculture, and also support historically normal levels of wildlife. Or maybe someone has, but if so they've failed to convince farmers to adopt it unilaterally, or governments to impose it as policy. So arguably the evidence we have is that if you consider only things that farmers like to be politically practical, then we're likely to see wildlife declines continue indefinitely. That is of course why many people are looking for solutions that don't depend on the consent of the agricultural industry. One approach is to go over their heads and appeal directly to government e.g. the biodiversity COP agreement requiring 30% of land to be set aside for nature. Another is to hope that technological breakthroughs (e.g. precision fermentation) can fundamentally alter consumer demand for food products in a way that makes them much less land intensive (primarily by cutting out meat and other animal products, which use a disproportionate amount of land when farmed extensively, and produces a disproportionate amount of pollution when farmed intensively). Of course, in the short term, the practical answer is "do both, wherever possible". Conservation organisations should be encouraged to purchase land so that it can be managed directly for wildlife. Farmers should be encouraged to adopt wildlife-friendly practices as much as possible. Governments should be encouraged to consider wildlife conservation a goal in itself when designing incentive schemes for the agriculture industry, and the taxpayers who directly fund much agriculture through subsidies should be encouraged to hold them accountable for their progress in this area. Easier said than done, of course, but as the original article makes clear, the status quo is chronic failure, and there's no reason to suppose that can be changed within the current paradigm.
veddox 3y ago
I reference this paper in almost every science-communication talk I give as an ecologist. It was not a new result by any means, we've had a whole range of other studies showing the same over the last three decades [1]. But it was still a very important study, simply for the sheer amount of data they collated: analysing 170 species trends across four decades across Europe is quite a feat! Taken together, it really drives home the message that modern agricultural practices are shredding the environment, but also that there is a lot of nuance behind biodiversity declines that we need to look into further, and that offer hope for improvement. [1] e.g. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959270919000480 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959270919000480, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-45854-0 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-45854-0, https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12585,https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.13307 https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12585,https://doi.org/10.1111/c..., https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2011.05.006 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2011.05.006, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1474-919X.2004.00375.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1474-919X.2004.00375.x
- toss1 3y ago
  Thank you for your work as an ecologist! I was really struck on a recent trip to Minnesota. Flew into the MSP airport, got the rental car and drove out to a smaller city. At first, we thought 'what nice countryside'. Then as the drive went on for hundreds of miles of nothing but plowed fields, with hardly even a shrub-row between fields, it became nightmare-ish — literally wondering "Where could any creature live in this wasteland?", and nevermind the pesticides & herbicides. And then considering that such habitat destruction visible from an airliner can often extend horizon-to-horizon from 36,000 ft altitude, it is horrifying. Industrial farming may be "efficient" by some parameters, but it really is destructive, and also evidently responsible for the obesity epidemic. Something's gotta give.
  - _y5hn 3y ago
    Check out the new Netflix documentary series "You are what you eat - A twin experiment". It's quite informative and comprehensive, plus do a few new studies / experiments on identical twins.
elzbardico 3y ago
Curiously, nobody seems to be very interested in studying the impact of renewable energy projects for bird populations. Probably hard as hell to get grants for that.
- veddox 3y ago
  Sorry, that's just not true. Just type "renewable energy bird populations" into Google Scholar and work your way through the results. There's tons of research on that out there. See e.g. here for a recent study: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsos.211558 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsos.211...
- johnnyworker 3y ago
  Why not check first if it's true before you claim it? It takes the same time, too: I simply copied and pasted from your comment and here they are, take your pick: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=the%20impact%20of%20renewable%20energy%20projects%20for%20bird%20populations https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=the%20impact%20of%20re... edit: But IMO more importantly, it's not like farmland practices that endanger birds and renewable energy somehow offset each other. Both are desirable (not the harmful farmland practices are, but farming per se is), even vital things, and their undesirable side-effects need to be reduced.
- persedes 3y ago
  If you are referring to wind turbines killing birds, those have been studied. First search result, bunch of studies in the footnotes: https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/do-wind-turbines-kill-birds https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/do-wind-turbines-kill-birds And if you want to put in relation to other bird killers: https://www.statista.com/chart/15195/wind-turbines-are-not-killing-fields-for-birds/ https://www.statista.com/chart/15195/wind-turbines-are-not-k...
  - hinkley 3y ago
    So, so many times. The upshot is that if we wanted to save birds, we would tear down all office buildings and fossil fuel power plants and replace them with windmills. But first, rid the world of cats.
graphe 3y ago
None of these will matter once Ukraine joins the EU. Their soil is the richest and has the greatest depth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernozem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernozem https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/15/ukraine-membership-european-union-explained/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/15/ukraine-memb... They will incapacitate the EU's ability to farm without subsidies, something they already do heavily. > E.U. farmers currently receive subsidies of more than $200 per hectare farmed. Given its vast arable land, Ukraine would be eligible for billions in payments. >Even with membership many years away, the issue of Ukrainian exports entering the E.U. market has spurred protest, with farmers in neighboring countries lashing out over a glut of grain.
- PakG1 3y ago
  Given what's happening in Ukraine right now, this would imply that high-quality soil could become the next resource that nations literally fight wars over.
  - graphe 3y ago
    If you look at the map, it won't be fought over as much as Ukraine will dominate agriculture. What the Netherlands did for pig farming in the 90s Ukraine will do for the entire industry. China buys pork from the Netherlands it's so cheap. If you mean natural resources it's still water for trade. Russia has little outward rivers, Crimea and Ukraine would help their trade a lot. The Suez canal and the area around is is incredibly wealthy.
  - hanniabu 3y ago
    And the soil will be filled with lead contamination from it being turned into a battlefield
    - lukas099 3y ago
      Is this an actual thing? Like are there studies showing this and stuff?
nashashmi 3y ago
Is it because of the lack of trees at farms that is causing the decline of birds? A side query brought to attention the following research paper: https://www.extension.iastate.edu/news/iowa-state-university-research-finds-wind-farms-positively-impact-crops https://www.extension.iastate.edu/news/iowa-state-university... (Iowa State University Research Finds Wind Farms Positively Impact Crops). It seems wind farms hinder winds causing positive effects on farms. By a small stretch of the imagination, trees should do the same thing, which will help with bird populations. And bird sticks on wind towers should also help bird populations. We are a "best practice" away from helping farms, trees, and birds all in one go!
robocat 3y ago
Hopefully we don't see similar outcomes to the smash sparrows campaign: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_campaign https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_campaign
mvdl 3y ago
It would be interesting to correlate the decline with the presence of wind-turbines and wind farms not mentioned in these studies.
LazarWolf_ 3y ago
I think what the article meant to say. “Farmland practices keep Europeans alive”

164 points by johntfella 3y ago

Putting the entirety of Europe into one basket of "farmland practices" is really not a correct way to approach this. There are countries that have lots of tiny farmers, there are countries that have small number of huge farms. Practices between the two are hugely different. Also in the east where cost of living is much lower many farmers don't do farming (like my neighbours) but they "keep land culture" for which they are paid by the EU. This means essentially mowing the hay twice a year and doing nothing else. One of my farmer neighbours plants his fields every year, for his bees to make hone from a particular plant he wants honey from. He doesn't even collect the results, he just mows it back into the earth. Then there is the amount of woodland area. Compare my country Poland that has over 30% of its area as woodlands and growing with Netherlands(not picking on Netherlands, it is better in other ways). You can't. And their map really shows it. So making a statement like "overall decline of bird species due to farming practices across Europe" is just untrue. I'd love to see some sort of comparison of which farming practices specifically cause which bird populations to decline. Perhaps then we can adapt these tgat work better.

ImAnAmateur 3y ago
Three of the 51 authors are from Poland. There are breakdowns by country and also comparisons of forest cover, urbanization, and temperature. There's a button that lets you look at the pictures if you want an easy country overview.
veddox 3y ago
Your first point is partly correct, but your conclusion isn't. The authors split up their results by country to show exactly the differences you mention. However, you have to keep in mind that the EU Common Agricultural Policy applies to all these countries, and actively promotes large-scale intensive agriculture. Bird collapses after a country joins the EU have been shown, for example in the Czech Republic [1]. So yes, while the magnitude may vary, the negative trend is a Europe-wide phenomenon. There's also been a lot of research done on what aspects of farming cause declines [2]. It's partly species-specific, but the three major causes are: loss of semi-natural habitat area (e.g. hedges, fallows), disturbance mortality (e.g. from harvesting), and pesticides (often mediated through the loss of insects as food source). [1] https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12585 https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12585 [2] e.g. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959270919000480 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959270919000480, https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.14400 https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.14400, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13531 https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13531, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2003.06.004 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2003.06.004
- ExoticPearTree 3y ago
  The real danger I think is in the decrease of insect population. Anecdotally, 15-20 years ago, a longer trip throughout the country (2-400km) the windshield would be littered with dead insects, now very very few insects hit the windshield. Is there a study about the effects of decreased pollination?
  - veddox 3y ago
    > The real danger I think is in the decrease of insect population. That is certainly one of the most important issues. However, habitat loss is even more critical (not only but also because it also decreases insect numbers). > Is there a study about the effects of decreased pollination? Pollination and other ecosystem services have been heavily studied in the last decade. Putting precise numbers on it is tricky though, because there are so many context-specific factors that play a role. However, this is one important global study that shows a clear effect of pollination on yield: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aax0121 https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aax0121
  - cookingmyserver 3y ago
    I used to think the same thing until I started riding a motorcycle. I quickly came to the realization that the primary reason I was seeing less insects on my windshield was because of improved aerodynamics. I am sure that there has also been a major decline in insect population as well though contributing to it.
- hellgas00 3y ago
  Can you elaborate if possible on the comment made about the EU Common Agricultural Policy's effects of promoting large scale intensive agriculture. Specifically what policy attributes support it.
  - veddox 3y ago
    Principally the direct payments. Farmers in the EU get a certain amount of money for every hectare of land they farm. This accounts for 40% of all CAP payments, and disproportionately benefits large farms, as they not only get much more money but also benefit from economies of scale. Adding to that, compulsory environmental regulations are quite lax, while voluntary environmental measures are often poorly recompensed, and are thus economically not viable. See here for some further reading: https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10080 https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10080 (There's lots more, but this should be a good starting point.)

moby_click 3y ago

It would be interesting, to also compare the output of farmland practices. If higher input leads to higher output, demand can be met with less land. Here is one example of that tradeoff: "Scale-dependent effectiveness of on-field vs. off-field agri-environmental measures for wild bees" - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1439179122000408 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S143917912... Different species and crops may yield different results.

veddox 3y ago
> If higher input leads to higher output, demand can be met with less land. That is a big debate in conservation biology (known as "land sparing vs land sharing"). One of the major problems of the land sparing approach, which you outline above, is that there is nothing that makes (at least European) farmers as upset as the requirement to give up farming on part of their land. So while it's neat in principle, many conservationists doubt its political practicability.
- jgraham 3y ago
  I don't disagree with you, but to give a bit of colour to the counterargument, as I understand it, we now have maybe 5 decades of experience which suggests that the "sharing" approach doesn't work at scale. In general, if you want to see wildlife in western Europe you go to a nature reserve, not a farm, because "spared" land will have nature but "shared" land increasingly won't. Of course there are some individual farmers who are doing great work and bucking that trend, but so far no one has found a magic formula that allows land to both be subject to intensive agriculture, and also support historically normal levels of wildlife. Or maybe someone has, but if so they've failed to convince farmers to adopt it unilaterally, or governments to impose it as policy. So arguably the evidence we have is that if you consider only things that farmers like to be politically practical, then we're likely to see wildlife declines continue indefinitely. That is of course why many people are looking for solutions that don't depend on the consent of the agricultural industry. One approach is to go over their heads and appeal directly to government e.g. the biodiversity COP agreement requiring 30% of land to be set aside for nature. Another is to hope that technological breakthroughs (e.g. precision fermentation) can fundamentally alter consumer demand for food products in a way that makes them much less land intensive (primarily by cutting out meat and other animal products, which use a disproportionate amount of land when farmed extensively, and produces a disproportionate amount of pollution when farmed intensively). Of course, in the short term, the practical answer is "do both, wherever possible". Conservation organisations should be encouraged to purchase land so that it can be managed directly for wildlife. Farmers should be encouraged to adopt wildlife-friendly practices as much as possible. Governments should be encouraged to consider wildlife conservation a goal in itself when designing incentive schemes for the agriculture industry, and the taxpayers who directly fund much agriculture through subsidies should be encouraged to hold them accountable for their progress in this area. Easier said than done, of course, but as the original article makes clear, the status quo is chronic failure, and there's no reason to suppose that can be changed within the current paradigm.

veddox 3y ago

I reference this paper in almost every science-communication talk I give as an ecologist. It was not a new result by any means, we've had a whole range of other studies showing the same over the last three decades [1]. But it was still a very important study, simply for the sheer amount of data they collated: analysing 170 species trends across four decades across Europe is quite a feat! Taken together, it really drives home the message that modern agricultural practices are shredding the environment, but also that there is a lot of nuance behind biodiversity declines that we need to look into further, and that offer hope for improvement. [1] e.g. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959270919000480 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959270919000480, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-45854-0 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-45854-0, https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12585,https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.13307 https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12585,https://doi.org/10.1111/c..., https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2011.05.006 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2011.05.006, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1474-919X.2004.00375.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1474-919X.2004.00375.x

toss1 3y ago
Thank you for your work as an ecologist! I was really struck on a recent trip to Minnesota. Flew into the MSP airport, got the rental car and drove out to a smaller city. At first, we thought 'what nice countryside'. Then as the drive went on for hundreds of miles of nothing but plowed fields, with hardly even a shrub-row between fields, it became nightmare-ish — literally wondering "Where could any creature live in this wasteland?", and nevermind the pesticides & herbicides. And then considering that such habitat destruction visible from an airliner can often extend horizon-to-horizon from 36,000 ft altitude, it is horrifying. Industrial farming may be "efficient" by some parameters, but it really is destructive, and also evidently responsible for the obesity epidemic. Something's gotta give.
- _y5hn 3y ago
  Check out the new Netflix documentary series "You are what you eat - A twin experiment". It's quite informative and comprehensive, plus do a few new studies / experiments on identical twins.

elzbardico 3y ago

Curiously, nobody seems to be very interested in studying the impact of renewable energy projects for bird populations. Probably hard as hell to get grants for that.

veddox 3y ago
Sorry, that's just not true. Just type "renewable energy bird populations" into Google Scholar and work your way through the results. There's tons of research on that out there. See e.g. here for a recent study: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsos.211558 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsos.211...
johnnyworker 3y ago
Why not check first if it's true before you claim it? It takes the same time, too: I simply copied and pasted from your comment and here they are, take your pick: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=the%20impact%20of%20renewable%20energy%20projects%20for%20bird%20populations https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=the%20impact%20of%20re... edit: But IMO more importantly, it's not like farmland practices that endanger birds and renewable energy somehow offset each other. Both are desirable (not the harmful farmland practices are, but farming per se is), even vital things, and their undesirable side-effects need to be reduced.
persedes 3y ago
If you are referring to wind turbines killing birds, those have been studied. First search result, bunch of studies in the footnotes: https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/do-wind-turbines-kill-birds https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/do-wind-turbines-kill-birds And if you want to put in relation to other bird killers: https://www.statista.com/chart/15195/wind-turbines-are-not-killing-fields-for-birds/ https://www.statista.com/chart/15195/wind-turbines-are-not-k...
- hinkley 3y ago
  So, so many times. The upshot is that if we wanted to save birds, we would tear down all office buildings and fossil fuel power plants and replace them with windmills. But first, rid the world of cats.

graphe 3y ago

None of these will matter once Ukraine joins the EU. Their soil is the richest and has the greatest depth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernozem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernozem https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/15/ukraine-membership-european-union-explained/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/15/ukraine-memb... They will incapacitate the EU's ability to farm without subsidies, something they already do heavily. > E.U. farmers currently receive subsidies of more than $200 per hectare farmed. Given its vast arable land, Ukraine would be eligible for billions in payments. >Even with membership many years away, the issue of Ukrainian exports entering the E.U. market has spurred protest, with farmers in neighboring countries lashing out over a glut of grain.

PakG1 3y ago
Given what's happening in Ukraine right now, this would imply that high-quality soil could become the next resource that nations literally fight wars over.
- graphe 3y ago
  If you look at the map, it won't be fought over as much as Ukraine will dominate agriculture. What the Netherlands did for pig farming in the 90s Ukraine will do for the entire industry. China buys pork from the Netherlands it's so cheap. If you mean natural resources it's still water for trade. Russia has little outward rivers, Crimea and Ukraine would help their trade a lot. The Suez canal and the area around is is incredibly wealthy.
- hanniabu 3y ago
  And the soil will be filled with lead contamination from it being turned into a battlefield
  - lukas099 3y ago
    Is this an actual thing? Like are there studies showing this and stuff?

nashashmi 3y ago

Is it because of the lack of trees at farms that is causing the decline of birds? A side query brought to attention the following research paper: https://www.extension.iastate.edu/news/iowa-state-university-research-finds-wind-farms-positively-impact-crops https://www.extension.iastate.edu/news/iowa-state-university... (Iowa State University Research Finds Wind Farms Positively Impact Crops). It seems wind farms hinder winds causing positive effects on farms. By a small stretch of the imagination, trees should do the same thing, which will help with bird populations. And bird sticks on wind towers should also help bird populations. We are a "best practice" away from helping farms, trees, and birds all in one go!

robocat 3y ago

Hopefully we don't see similar outcomes to the smash sparrows campaign: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_campaign https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_campaign

mvdl 3y ago

It would be interesting to correlate the decline with the presence of wind-turbines and wind farms not mentioned in these studies.

LazarWolf_ 3y ago

I think what the article meant to say. “Farmland practices keep Europeans alive”