Algemeen

Bees tend to get the most attention as pollinators critical to the survival of plant species. But lizards, mice, bats, and other vertebrates also act as important pollinators. A new study finds that fruit and seed production drops an average 63 percent when vertebrates, but not insects, are kept away from plants.

Most Britons remain blithely unaware that since the Beatles broke up, we have wiped out half our wildlife. Yet we are not alone. Last week, the French woke up in a dramatic way to the fact that their own farmland birds, their skylarks and partridges and meadow pipits, were rapidly disappearing: Le Monde, the most sober of national journals, splashed the fact across the top of its front page.

Europe’s crisis of collapsing bird and insect numbers will worsen further over the next decade because the EU is in a “state of denial” over destructive farming practices, environmental groups are warning. European agriculture ministers are pushing for a new common agriculture policy (CAP) from 2021 to 2028 which maintains generous subsidies for big farmers and ineffectual or even “fake” environmental or “greening” measures, they say.

There has been a steep decline in bird populations in Balochistan (one of the four provinces of Pakistan. Its provincial capital and largest city is Quetta), said conservator of forests and wildlife Balochistan Sharifuddin on Wednesday. The official confirmed that there has been a decline in the overall population of sparrows among other birds in Quetta and other parts of Balochistan. The revelation comes just a day after bird lovers marked the World Sparrow Day on Tuesday (March 20). “Even crow, which was a common bird, has decreased in number,” he remarked.

Bird populations across the French countryside have fallen by a third over the last fifteen years, researchers have said. Dozens of species have seen their numbers decline, in some cases by two-thirds, the scientists said in a pair of studies – one national in scope and the other covering a large agricultural region in central France.

Ce déclin « catastrophique », d’un tiers en quinze ans, est largement dû aux pratiques agricoles, selon les études du CNRS et du Muséum d’histoire naturelle. Le printemps risque fort d’être silencieux. Le Muséum national d’histoire naturelle (MNHN) et le Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) publient, mardi 20 mars, les résultats principaux de deux réseaux de suivi des oiseaux sur le territoire français et évoquent un phénomène de « disparition massive », « proche de la catastrophe écologique ».

"You are what you eat" is the guiding principle behind a new study comparing the diet of birds today with that of birds dead for more than a century. The results show large changes in the diets of aerial insectivores, or birds such as swallows, swifts, martins and whip-poor-wills that consume insects while in mid-flight. Today, the bulk of the birds' diet is made up of small insects at the lower end of the food web, or at a lower "trophic" level, the researchers say.

The State of the Nations Butterfly report which is published every five years shows long term and ten year trends – and it’s waving a danger flag. The most recent report published in 2015 indicates that overall a staggering 76 percent of our butterflies declined in abundance and occurrence over the past 40 years.

Four species of butterfly have become extinct over the past 150 years and the rest face an uncertain future. Our moths are doing no better as the total number over the past 40 years has declined overall by 28 percent, even as low as 40 percent in southern areas.

Some of Britain’s favourite wildlife is at risk of becoming extinct unless there is a new, 21st-century agricultural revolution, experts are warning. Species from hedgehogs to skylarks and birds of prey are being wiped out – in part by companies with vested interests in “destructive” factory farming, it was claimed on World Wildlife Day, which takes place today. The “alarming” declines in wildlife will threaten not just the richness of the planet but also our ability to grow food, according to the RSPB.