Farmland practices are driving bird populations decline across Europe

Biodiversity is exposed to increasing pressure by climate and land use changes. But how are species responding to these pressures and which pressure is more dominant remain controversial questions. In a collaborative study recently published in PNAS including 28 European countries we assessed, for the first time, how 170 bird species have responded to major human induced pressures at a continental scale over almost 4 decades. The detrimental effect of agriculture intensification on avian biodiversity at the European scale is one of the major findings of the study. The increase in pesticides and fertilizer have led to the decline of many bird populations, and even more to birds eating insects.