Europe has 421 million fewer birds than just three decades ago, according to a new study led by Dr Richard Inger from the University of Exeter’s Environment and Sustainability Institute, UK. Around 90 % of these losses were from the 36 most common species, including house sparrows, starlings, skylarks and gray partridges.
European bee-eaters (Merops apiaster). Image credit: Rashuli / CC BY 2.0.
The study, published in the journal Ecology Letters, brought together data on 144 European bird species from many thousands of individual surveys in 25 different countries.
“It is very worrying that the most common species of bird are declining rapidly because it is this group of birds that people benefit from the most. It is becoming increasingly clear that interaction with the natural world and wildlife is central to human well-being and significant loss of common birds could be quite detrimental to human society,” Dr Inger said.
Birds provide multiple benefits to society. They help to control agricultural pests, are important dispersers of seeds, and scavenging species play a key role in the removal of carcasses from the environment.
In addition, for many people birds are the primary way in which they interact with wildlife, through listening to bird song, enjoying the sight of birds in their local environment, feeding garden birds and through the hobby of bird watching.
The majority of the declines can be attributed to considerable losses from relatively few common birds, but not all common species are declining.
Numbers of great tits, robins, blue tits and blackbirds were all shown to be increasing.
Populations of rarer species, including marsh harriers, ravens, buzzards and stone curlews have also shown increases in recent years: this is likely to be the result of direct conservation action and legal protection in Europe.
“The rarer birds in this study, whose populations are increasing, have benefited from protection across Europe,” said study co-author Dr Richard Gregory of the RSPB’s Center for Conservation Science.
“For example, white storks and marsh harriers receive among the highest level of protection in the European Union – this is why their numbers have increased.”
“The conservation and legal protection of all birds and their habitats in tandem are essential to reverse declines.”
“This is a warning from birds throughout Europe. It is clear that the way we are managing the environment is unsustainable for many of our most familiar species.”
Dr Petr Voříšek of Czech Society for Ornithology and Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic, who is a co-author on the study, added: “the study brings a very important message to conservation practice in Europe.”
“This would not have been possible without thousands of skilled volunteer fieldworkers who count birds according to high scientific standards and contribute their data to the national monitoring schemes.”
Conservation efforts tend to be focused on rarer species but the research suggests that conservationists should also address issues affecting common birds, for example those traditionally associated with farmland.
The decline in bird populations can be linked to modern farming methods, deterioration of the quality of the environment and habitat fragmentation, although the relative importance of these pressures remains unclear.
The ornithologists suggest that greater conservation funding and effort should be directed to wider scale environmental improvement programmes.
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Richard Inger et al. Common European birds are declining rapidly while less abundant species’ numbers are rising. Ecology Letters, published online November 2, 2014; doi: 10.1111/ele.12387
