Farmers urged to see importance of preserving native bird species

BIRDWATCH Ireland is urging farmers to view maintaining native bird species as a core part of the economic, social and environmental sustainability of rural Ireland.

New figures from BirdWatch Ireland and BirdLife Europe reveal that farmland bird populations in Ireland and across Europe are at their lowest levels since records began.

Conservationists say the results prove the need for reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) so that it rewards and encourages farmers who put conservation measures in place on their land.

BirdWatch Ireland senior conservation officer, Alex Copland, said: “The CAP offers the best opportunity to ensure the economic, social and environmental sustainability of rural Ireland into the next decade.

“Farmland birds are indicators of the health of ecosystems in our wider countryside. Maintaining the health of these systems supports not just birds and biodiversity, but the soils where we grow crops or graze livestock, the water we drink and even the air we breathe.”

A Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme has compiled population figures for 145 common and widespread bird species in 25 European countries between 1980 and 2009.

Amongst those species covered, farmland birds are the most threatened group, with 20 out of 36 species in decline, and overall numbers at an all-time low, down by 48% since 1980.

Some of the species that have declined the most over the last three decades across Europe include familiar farmland birds like grey partridge (–82%), skylark (–46%), linnet (–62%) and corn bunting (–66%).

In Ireland, the annual Irish Countryside Bird Survey recorded the lowest ever levels for yellowhammer in 2009, while farmland birds such as skylark and kestrel have shown significant, long-term declines since the survey started in 1998.