[mou] Fwd: BAD NEWS ABOUT BRITISH BIRDS

[Jim Williams]

forward by Jim Williams, Wayzata

Begin forwarded message:

From: Joan Knoebel <jmknoebel@tds.net>
Date: February 25, 2005 11:46:20 AM CST
To: "Wisconsin Birding Network" <wisbirdn@lawrence.edu>
Subject: [wisb] BAD NEWS ABOUT BRITISH BIRDS


>
> From the Independent (London)
>
> Mystery of the silent woodlands: scientists are baffled as bird 
> numbers plummet
>
>
>
>
> By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
>
>
>
>
> 25 February 2005
>
> It has hardly been noticed, but it is another sinister warning sign of 
> a world going badly wrong. Populations of some of Britain's most 
> attractive woodland birds are plummeting at a rate that threatens them 
> with extinction, and nobody knows why.
>
> Precipitous declines in the numbers of some species, of up to 
> four-fifths, have been registered over the past 30 years, but 
> scientists are just realising what is happening, and they have no 
> simple explanation.
>
> In its scale and its range, the phenomenon is one of the most ominous 
> events in the natural history of Britain over the past half-century. 
> Perversely, the decline comes at a time when Britain is planting more 
> woodlands than ever, and forest management has never been more 
> sympathetic to wildlife conservation.
>
> About a dozen species of small birds that have flitted through our 
> woodlands for thousands of years are suddenly in serious trouble. This 
> may be associated with climate change, linked to the damage that 
> excess deer numbers are doing to the undergrowth in woodlands, or in 
> some cases, linked to trouble for birds on migration routes to and 
> from Africa.
>
> The endangered species are less familiar than common garden visitors 
> such as robins and blackbirds, which is perhaps why their 
> disappearance has taken longer to register. But now a study, appearing 
> next month, makes the picture clear for the first time.
>
> It shows that five of the species - the spotted flycatcher, the lesser 
> spotted woodpecker, the lesser whitethroat, the lesser redpoll and the 
> tree pipit - plunged by more than three-quarters between 1966 and 
> 1999, and continues to decline.
>
> The population of the spotted flycatcher fell by no less than 85 per 
> cent, and that of the lesser spotted woodpecker by 81 per cent. 
> Another five species - the willow tit, the marsh tit, the woodcock, 
> the dunnock or hedge sparrow and the willow warbler - fell by between 
> half and three-quarters, and two more species, the songthrush and the 
> bullfinch, fell by nearly a half.
>
> Yet another group, for which there are no reliable numerical figures, 
> is nevertheless known to have fallen significantly in either numbers 
> or in range, or in both. These include the long-eared owl, the 
> hawfinch and the nightingale.
>
> In southern England, where the situation is worst, some of these 
> species have virtually disappeared. "These birds are falling off the 
> radar in a quite catastrophic way and we have no real idea why," said 
> Graham Appleton of the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), Britain's 
> leading bird research organisation. Three of its researchers, Rob 
> Fuller, David Noble and Des Vanhinsbergh, produced the study with Ken 
> Smith, a researcher from the Royal Society for the Protection of 
> Birds.
>
> The most puzzling and perhaps most worrying aspect of the woodland 
> bird decline, apart from its remarkable scale, is that there is no 
> obvious single cause, as there has been with the dramatic and 
> well-known decline over the past 30 years of British birds on 
> farmland.
>
> Species of the fields such as the skylark, the grey partridge, the 
> corn bunting and the turtle dove have also dropped enormously in 
> numbers, but the reason is well-known, the range of new agricultural 
> practices that came in with the intensive farming revolution.
>
> Turning these declines around by more wildlife-friendly farming 
> methods is now official government policy, and may well eventually 
> succeed.
>
> But the difficulty with addressing the woodland bird decline is that 
> there is no obvious simple reason for it, and thus no obvious simple 
> solution.
>
> In their study, which will be published in the March edition of the 
> journal British Birds, the researchers offer seven possible causes 
> which may be behind the declines. They are:
>
> * Pressures on migrant birds during migration, or on their wintering 
> grounds in Africa;
>
> * Climate change in Britain itself, especially changes in the timing 
> of the emergence of insects used as food, and the drying-out of 
> woodlands;
>
> * Reduction in the actual numbers of insects and other invertebrates;
>
> * Impacts of land use on woodland edges and on habitats outside 
> woodland;
>
> * Reduced management of lowland woodland;
>
> * Intensified habitat modification by deer, which eat the woodland 
> bushes, shrubs and grasses, and stop regeneration of trees, reducing 
> nesting areas and insect populations;
>
> * New pressure on nests and young birds from predators, such as grey 
> squirrels, members of the crow family, and great spotted woodpeckers.
>
> But at present, these possibilities are speculative, and the true 
> causes of an enormous change in Britain's natural environment remain a 
> mystery.
>
>
>
>
>


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