The Extinction Series

Date: 1980-present

Place: Europe

Death toll: 421 million

Increasing levels of fragmentation and urbanisation of the countryside as well as the use of insecticides have affected bird numbers across the globe.  

Garden birds in ‘alarming’ decline was the headline in The Telegraph of November, 2014.

A study, which was published in the journal Ecology Letters, used data gathered from 25 countries as part of the Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme. It has shown that populations of the most widespread species have dropped by around 421 million across Europe since 1980. House sparrows and starlings are among the worst affected species as populations declined by 150 million in 30 years.

Dr Richard Inger, an ecologist at the University of Exeter, who led the study, said: “The vast majority of the declines are caused by losses in the most common species which are often forgotten about in terms of conservation. “Birds have key roles in ecosystems for things like pest control, seed dispersal and carcass removal. Do we really want to lose bird song to watching birds feed in your garden?” 

“It is clear that the way we are managing the environment is unsustainable for many of our most familiar species.” (Gray, 2017).

In another study (2013) refered to as The Second Silent Spring?, by the American Bird Conservancy it was found that eonicotinoids, now the most widely used insecticides on Earth, are lethal to birds: A single seed coated with a neonic can kill a songbird, such as Field Sparrow. 

Bird populations tended to decline by an average of 3.5 percent annually where these pesticides are used. Those insecticides, have also been in the news due to the way they harmed bees and other pollinators (News.nationalgeographic.com, 2017). 

Rachel Carson was the first to write about pesticides and birds back in 1962. Carson’s seminal Silent Spring was the first popular attempt to warn the world that pesticides were contributing to the “sudden silencing of the song of birds.”

Bibliography

Gray, R. (2017). Garden birds in ‘alarming’ 

decline. [online] Telegraph.co.uk. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/wildlife/11204029/Garden-birds-in-alarming-decline.html [Accessed 22 Apr. 2017].

News.nationalgeographic.com. (2017). Second Silent Spring? Bird Declines Linked to Popular Pesticides. [online] Available at: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/07/140709-birds-insects-pesticides-insecticides-neonicotinoids-silent-spring/ [Accessed 23 Apr. 2017].

Lear, L. (2017). Rachel Carson, The Life and Legacy. [online] Rachelcarson.org. Available at: http://www.rachelcarson.org [Accessed 22 Apr. 2017].

“…and over our heads will float the Blue Bird singing of beautiful and impossible things, of things that are lovely and that never happen, of things that are not and that should be.” – Oscar Wilde