March 20, 2018
Bird populations across an eerily
quiet French countryside have collapsed, on average, by a third over the last
decade-and-a-half, alarmed researchers reported on Tuesday.
Dozens of species have seen their
numbers decline, in some cases by two-thirds, the scientists detailed in a pair
of studies, one national in scope and the other covering a large agricultural
region in central France.
"The situation is
catastrophic," said Benoit Fontaine, a conservation biologist at
France's National Museum of Natural History and co-author of one of the
studies.
"Our countryside is in the
process of become a veritable desert," he said in a communique released by
the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), which also contributed to
the findings.
The common white throat, the
ortolan bunting, the Eurasian skylark and other once-ubiquitous species have
all fallen off by at least a third, according a detailed, annual census
initiated at the start of the century.
A migratory song bird, the meadow
pipit, has declined by nearly 70 percent.
The culprit, researchers speculate,
is the intensive use of pesticides on vast tracts of monoculture crops,
especially wheat and corn.
The problem is not that birds are being poisoned, but
that the insects on which they depend for food have disappeared.
"There are hardly any
insects left, that's the number one problem," said Vincent Bretagnolle, a
CNRS ecologist at the Centre for Biological Studies in Chize.
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