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Bird populations in French countryside have fallen by a third in fifteen years

theguardian.com

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Re: Bird populations in French countryside have fallen by a third in fifteen years

#41

Post by cs02rm0 »

dredmorbius wrote: post #35
tzs wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anecdotally I can say that there are certainly far fewer insects here than there were in the 60s and 70s when I was growing up, and also that there seem to be far fewer birds. Could some of that be due to you paying more attention to insects and birds when you were growing up? Kids tend to spend more time outdoors than adults, especially more unstructured time, and so might be expected to have more time to notice t…

I can assure you that the attention windshields have paid to bugs hasn't changed. The need to clean same, has.

There could be other factors.

Anecdotally, I remember in the 90s my parents having an old and very box shaped Volvo. Driving through light snow one day my mother was struggling to clear the windscreen, we were on our way to pick up a hire car which ended up being a brand new Mercedes. The angle and shape of the windscreen was entirely different and the snow just followed the airflow up and over.

That said, we have front registration plates in the UK which are probably less subject to aero improvements and ISTR the same phenomenon being observed there.

Re: Bird populations in French countryside have fallen by a third in fifteen years

#42

Post by isolli »

justinator wrote: post #21
sverige wrote: post #2

I don't know of any studies to prove it is true, but I suspect that the US Midwest (in particular) has had a similar decline. Anecdotally I can say that there are certainly far fewer insects here than there were in the 60s and 70s when I was growing up, and also that there seem to be far fewer birds. I wonder if we'll stop dumping this stuff into the environment before it's too late. It would require a whole new way…

Well, the trend has been going on for a while. May we not forget the passenger pigeon? Naturalists in the 1800's would wipe out entire species getting specimens. I don't know if humans are all that great at tending the Earth's biomass.

> Naturalists in the 1800's would wipe out entire species getting specimens.

This is the first time I hear this. Do you have examples?

Re: Bird populations in French countryside have fallen by a third in fifteen years

#45

Post by sveme »

cjensen wrote: post #20
sverige wrote: post #2

I don't know of any studies to prove it is true, but I suspect that the US Midwest (in particular) has had a similar decline. Anecdotally I can say that there are certainly far fewer insects here than there were in the 60s and 70s when I was growing up, and also that there seem to be far fewer birds. I wonder if we'll stop dumping this stuff into the environment before it's too late. It would require a whole new way…

No there are not fewer birds. Ornithologists routinely census areas for species and counts. They notice when species decline in an area. They notice when new species arrive in an area. There have been zero reports of birds in general declining. EDIT: Here's a reference [1]. Note that it specifically calls out species in general decline: the Northern Bobwhite, American Kestrel, and the Loggerhead Shrike. [1] http://ww…

There's hard data from a study over 27 years in Germany on the decline of insects, references below:

> sabertoothed

In some nature protected areas in Germany, researchers [1] have reported a 75% decline in flying insects over 27 years. Study is from Oct 2017. This is alarming.

[1] http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.....

Re: Bird populations in French countryside have fallen by a third in fifteen years

#46

Post by seszett »

DoctorBit wrote: post #23

"Despite a government plan to cut pesticide use in half by 2020, sales in France have climbed steadily, reaching more than 75,000 tonnes of active ingredient in 2014, according to European Union figures." That's an incredibly large amount of pesticides - over two pounds of active ingredient per French citizen per year.

And apparently the US used 1182 million pounds in 2012[0] which is almost four pounds per US citizen, and 20% of world usage.

[0] https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2017-01/documents...

Re: Bird populations in French countryside have fallen by a third in fifteen years

#48

Post by jrimbault »

newnewpdro wrote: post #40
Jesus_Jones wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They deny science, but also fact-based decision making and inconvenient facts.

This should be expected when your population is still predominately religious. Religions condition people to believe fiction as fact.

>Religions condition people to believe fiction as fact.

I would say "set up the minds of people to accept fiction as fact more smoothly". Or something like that, less categorical.

Re: Bird populations in French countryside have fallen by a third in fifteen years

#49

Post by JetSetWilly »

debJC wrote: post #5

GMO anyone?

GMO is illegal in france. If anything it is the lack of GMO causing the problem. No GMO crops means you must use incesticides in large quantities, with GMO crops you don’t need to use incesticides and therefore insects and the environment are less effected.

A good way fir France to tackle this problem would be to allow GMO crops. Alas, hysteria and superstition are against sensible solutions.

Re: Bird populations in French countryside have fallen by a third in fifteen years

#50

Post by bambax »

What's so infuriating in France is that farmers are basically sacred: nothing can be said, let alone done, to curb their behavior.

They benefit from all kinds of advantages: they don't pay taxes on fuel and don't pay for water (water in France is very expensive for everyone else except farmers), have all kinds of special conditions and fiscal deductions, and that's in addition to the direct payments they get from the CAP (around 12 billion Euros / year).

All of this for less than 2% of French GDP and the active destruction of the ecosystem, deforestation and pollution on a huge scale. In the French countryside all one can see are immense fields of corn and wheat, watered all the time (it's esp. infuriating to witness watering in the summer, at noon). The French countryside isn't charming, it's horrible, it looks like a grand experiment from an evil dictator.

Yet politicians from absolutely all parties from the extreme left to the extreme right and including everything in-between, fall over themselves to give more to farmers. Every single national politician attends the "Salon de l'Agriculture" held in Paris in February, etc. etc.

Why is there no one to say, this has gone too far; why can't we hold those people accountable for what they have done and what they are doing, I don't understand.

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