Wish I had something more positive to report here. Bird populations in France are rapidly declining because they have no insects to eat…
“The situation is catastrophic,” said Benoit Fontaine, a conservation biologist at France’s National Museum of Natural History. “Our countryside is in the process of becoming a veritable desert.”
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%. The museum described the pace and extent of the wipe-out as “a level approaching an ecological catastrophe”.
The primary culprit, researchers speculate, is the intensive use of pesticides on vast tracts of monoculture crops, especially wheat and corn.
