Agricultural intensification and farmland birds: new insights from a central European country

Abstract

The relationship between agricultural intensification and a decline in farmland bird populations is well documented in Europe, but the results are mostly based on data from the western part of the continent. In the former socialist eastern and central European countries, political changes around 1990 resulted in a steep decline in the intensity of agriculture. Therefore, one would expect populations of farmland birds to have recovered under these conditions of lower agricultural intensity. We explored population trends of 19 farmland bird species in the Czech Republic between 1982 and 2003 using data from a large‐scale monitoring scheme, and, additionally, we looked for relationships between such population changes and a number of variables describing the temporal development of Czech agriculture. Most farmland species declined during the focal period, and this decline was steepest in farmland specialists (Northern Lapwing Vanellus vanellus, Skylark Alauda arvensis, Linnet Carduelis cannabina and Yellowhammer Emberiza citrinella). Although the intensity of agriculture was lower after than before 1990, the overall decline continued in most farmland bird species, albeit at a slower rate. The correlations between agricultural intensity and farmland bird decline showed opposite patterns to that found in other European studies, because bird populations were highest in years with the most intensive agriculture. We speculate that this pattern could have resulted from the impact of different driving forces causing farmland bird decline in different periods. The high intensity of agriculture could have caused the decline of the originally abundant populations before 1990. After 1990, the decreasing area of arable land could be the most important factor resulting in the continued decline of farmland bird populations. Our results demonstrate that the drivers of farmland bird population changes could differ across Europe, and thus investigations into the effect of farmland management in different parts of the continent are urgently required.

Remnants of medieval field patterns in the Czech Republic: Analysis of driving forces behind their disappearance with special attention to the role of hedgerows

“…Hedgerows provide a habitat or food resources for a wide range of plants and animals (e.g. Green and Sears, 1994;Petit and Burel, 1998;Dover and Sparks, 2000;Hinsley and Bellamy, 2000;Maudsley, 2000;McCollin et al, 2000;Michel et al, 2006;Reif et al, 2008), including fauna that control agricultural pests (Marshall, 1988). Moreover, they are of high relevance to landscape connectivity (Forman and Baudry, 1984;Baudry et al, 2003;Molnarova, 2008) and also increase landscape heterogeneity (Hoobs, 1992;Quin and Burel, 2002), which not only provides ecological benefits but also has a positive influence on the visual quality of the landscape (Hunziker, 1995;de la Fuente de Val et al, 2006).…”

Agrártájhoz kötődő madárfajok („farmland birds”) állományának változása, helyzete Európában

“…33 millió ha) gabonatermelés folyik (EUROSTAT, 2010), ami a madarak szempontjából igen jelentős. Az európai mezei madárfajok vagy az agrártájhoz kötődő madárfajok ("farmland birds") elmúlt évtizedekben megfigyelt állománycsökkenésének (TUCKER & HEATH, 1994;SIRIWARDENA et al, 1998;PITKÄNEN & TIAINEN, 2001;WRETENBERG et al, 2006;REIF et al, 2008) okaként is elsődlegesen a mezőgazdaság intenzifikációját tartják DONALD et al, 2001;GREGORY et al, 2005). A téma néhány évtizede már a természetvédelmi biológia egyik legfontosabb kérdése (DONALD et al, 2002;GREGORY et al, 2005;BENTON, 2007), jelen munka az előbbiekben említett változást és helyzetét tekinti át.…”

“…EUROSTAT, www.epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu) (BÁLDI & FARAGÓ, 2007;REIF et al, 2008). Ezt bizonyítja az EBCC (2012) …”

“…Az agrártájhoz kötődő madárfajok ("farmland birds") elmúlt évtizedekben megfigyelt állománycsökkenését (például SIRIWARDENA et al, 1998;PITKÄNEN & TIAINEN, 2001;DONALD et al, 2006;REIF et al, 2008) az előző adatok is jól alátámasztják. Összegezve az adatbázisok információját (3. táblázat).…”

Paramount Roles of Wild Birds as Bioindicators of Contamination

“…Pesticide can contaminate the soil, water and air and an increase in the use of pesticides decrease the availability of arthropod prey and weeds [22,23] for bird species. Similarly, bird species have equally shown substantial population decline due to range contraction in agroecosystems, which have been linked to the intensification of agriculture as well [24,25] as the effects of pollutants have been reviewed by Fuller [26] and Newton [27]. A number of studies have explored how regular pollutants destructively affect bird populations for instance, the increased use of pesticides and inorganic fertilizers [27,28] increases food production but with an increased in the level of contaminants in agricultural landscape.…”