Bird dying causes and countermeasures

The creeping dying - The decline of the birds

The winter census of the Nature Conservation Alliance 2016/2017 showed a decline in the typical feed house visitors by about 17% compared to all surveys in 2011. These include "common species" such as tits or greenfinches. This does not have to mean anything, because at times strong fluctuations are normal in bird populations. In addition, there are few young birds from the brood in the spring of 2016 and the mild winter, which meant that many breeding birds did not fly back all the way back.

However, in Europe and globally, a creeping death of birds has been taking place for decades, which is also affecting more and more widespread species. In Germany, almost half of all breeding birds are on the Red List of Endangered Species.

contents

• The creeping dying - The decline of the birds
• The agricultural desert
• insects dying
• The disappearance of the field birds
• Fertilizers and pesticides
• precautions
• Bird protection versus commercial production?
• Example red kite
• Bird death on glass facades
• Train Kill
• power lines
• Usutu virus and bird flu
• Bird hunting on the Mediterranean Sea
• 700 kilometers of death nets
• Bird hunting in Germany
• Is species conservation meaningless?

The agricultural desert

Today in Germany just the birds are dying out, which were part of everyday life in small-scale agriculture. Listening to the singing of a skylark has become something special. Lapwing and partridge no longer live on the monocultures of ever-larger arable land. Synthetic fertilizers and pesticides are associated with a loss of near-natural meadows, pastures and fallow land.

Many of the bird species in agricultural habitats are threatened with extinction today. The skylark example, you hear only rarely sing. (Image: mirkograul / fotolia.com)

insects dying

In addition, the birds are lacking in food: regionally insects have decreased by up to 80%, and the majority of small birds need insects to raise the young. Swallows, swifts or flycatchers are completely dependent on them. Insects are at the beginning of the food chain, and when they fall away, populations collapse at the bottom of the food chain.

The decline of the insects has clear reasons: Above all, they destroy the poisons in the fields. In addition, they also lack habitat and food crops.

The disappearance of the field birds

The typical types of traditional agricultural landscape today are massively threatened by intensive agriculture and often disappeared regionally. These include quail, partridge, corncrake, snipe, lapwing, black-tailed godwit, linnet, smoke-swallower and house-swallow. Likewise affected are the field, hood and wood lark, Ortolan, gray and yellow hammer, meadow wagtail, Red-backed Shrike, Raubwürger, Meadow Pipit, Little Owl, Red Kite, Brown and Stonechat.

They also lack fallow field edges, meadows and pastures, grass strips and hedges. Such partial habitats have a significant impact on the stocks.

Added to this is the cultivation of winter cereals, corn and rapeseed. In the second half of the breeding season, they already grow so high that the affected soil breeders can no longer breed here or look for food.

Although rapeseed looks nice - but since the field crop shoots up early, the fields are a problem for soil breeders. (Image: Ingo Bartussek / fotolia.com)

Fertilizers and pesticides

Although the large quantities of fertilizer and pesticides lead to extremely productive harvests, many open-country birds rely on gaps in planting.

Habitat for field and meadow birds is also lost through settlements, industrial settlements and traffic areas. However, species killer number one is industrial agriculture: the diversity of species in cities today is far greater than in the cleared agricultural desert.

Not only do pesticides annihilate the diet of many birds, namely insects and seeds, but they also provide the animals with the cover they need to nest.

Some factors that lead to the decline of bird populations are not obvious: early rolling of the land, the change of vegetation or a too low groundwater level are not obvious to the layman, but for some species they decide to be or not to be. If the wet meadows dry out, there is no room for curlew or black-tailed godwit.

precautions

For most breeding birds in Germany, the protective measures are known and implemented. This includes the creation of uncultivated marginal strips of fields, fallow land, green strips or flower islands.

Introduced systematically, the stocks of many species multiply. 20 square meters large "window" for skylarks, on which not sown, have a very good effect on the animals.

But to look at such measures as compensation for industrial agriculture would be window dressing. In fact, such islands do not compensate for the reduced pesticides and fertilizers, and the birds' stocks can not recover when they lack nutrition.

Protective measures such as the creation of grass strips or flowering islands are not enough to compensate for the effects of pesticides and fertilizers in agriculture. (Image: Countrypixel / fotolia.com)

Bird protection versus commercial production?

An elevated water level has positive effects on lapwing, black-tailed godwit, common snipe or curlew. But such projects are almost only possible if the land belongs to the public sector or nature conservation associations.

In endangered species of field fauna such as gray-horned or partridge, experiments showed that about 10% of the area would have to consist of fallow land to have a positive effect.

Projects in the UK show that in conventional agriculture, around 4% of the area can easily be targeted as grain feed or cover for birds, without financial loss.

It becomes clear that measures that make agriculture more positive for birds on the spot should focus on the needs of individual species: the red-backed shrike needs around 5% of the area, and without it, it can not settle.

The NABU generally requires at least ten percent of the total area to be designated as areas in which ecology has priority. Depending on the landscape, this ranges from protective strips against erosion to extensively managed grassland.

In addition, there would have to be stricter requirements for the use of fertilizers and pesticides.

Example red kite

Germany, in the heart of Central Europe, has very few endemic species, ie animals that only live here. The red kite, however, has its focus in the open landscapes of central and southern Germany. Half of all animals worldwide live here. Their stocks are currently falling, especially due to the increasing rapeseed and maize cultivation.

The birds of prey breed in rows of trees and forests, but seek their prey like small mammals, birds and carrion in the open landscape. The corn and oilseed rape grow so high that the milan can no longer see the prey. They adapt and search the edge of the village or settlements, but if they can not avoid them, they will lack food just as they feed their young.

In addition, red kites particularly often fall victim to wind turbines, which stand exactly in the open landscape in which they are looking for food.

Wind turbines pose a great threat to red kites. (Image: W.Scott McGill / fotolia.com)

The main reason for the decline, however, are poison baits for foxes and wolves in the wintering areas of the birds. They also eat rodents contaminated by poison, such as dead rats.

Bird death on glass facades

Glazed buildings require 18 million bird life each year. This makes them a major cause of bird loss. Today, glass structures can be found in one-story houses as well as in skyscrapers several hundred meters high. Thus, birds of all kinds find their death here, at any altitude.

Train Kill

The railway also kills birds to a great extent. The death rate almost doubles as the speed increases. For example, up to 20 birds die each kilometer of track and year on trains with a maximum speed of 160 km / h and 38 on high-speed trains of more than 200 km / h.

Although the train is an environmentally friendly alternative to the car, the trakill for birds is more serious than the roadkill. Particularly common is birds of prey and owls, in addition to the common buzzard and the sea eagle also endangered species such as the little owl and the barn owl.

Meanwhile, the traffic is also a big problem, but here are missing accurate statistics.

power lines

As before, birds die from electric shock or because they approach power lines. Especially large birds are affected: cranes, black and white storks, but also various other species such as mallards, coots, black-headed gulls, lapwings or snipe.

In a new study, NABU found out that 1.5 to 2.8 million birds in Germany die each year from collisions with high voltage power lines and electric shock in the medium voltage range.

Usutu virus and bird flu

In 2016, many birds died from the Usutu virus and avian influenza (avian influenza). The tropical Usutu virus is transmitted by mosquitoes. Blackbirds mainly die of the pathogen, but it also affects owls and owls.

In Egypt, about twelve million migratory birds are caught during the autumn migration to sell them as a delicacy. (Image: natros / fotolia.com)

Bird hunting on the Mediterranean Sea

Hunters around the Mediterranean still kill more than 25 million migratory birds. Especially Malta, Cyprus and Egypt, but still Italy, are deadly stations. According to Birdlife International, 12 million migratory birds are caught every year for the cooking pot in Egypt alone. A lucrative business, because the birds have a commercial value of about 40 million euros.

75% of the animals are also illegally caught under Egyptian law. Among them are highly endangered species such as goat's milk or corncrake.

700 kilometers of death nets

The bird catch in Egypt is even increasing, because the hunters now sell the loot in the oil states in the Persian Gulf. Demand is rising and more and more impoverished Egyptians are taking part in the hunt. In addition, they use better and better means and lure birds, for example, by playing their calls from MP3 players.

A distance of more than 700 kilometers becomes a death-trap: from Gaza to the Libyan borders, nets are catching millions of birds on their way to their African wintering areas.

The NABU demands the following countermeasures: First, to enforce the existing hunting laws in Egypt, second, to control international trade and to develop third economic alternatives for the birdcatchers. In addition, there would have to be information campaigns aimed primarily at young people.

In the last twelve years, of ten species that migrate from Germany through Egypt, six of them have lost stocks.

Bird hunting in Germany

Pointing your finger at the Egyptian bird catcher is easy. But the German hunters are no better: they kill around 1.5 million migratory birds each year that overwinter from Siberia and Scandinavia in this country.

They take care of a damp rubbish around the threat of the affected species in their breeding areas. You do not even know how many individuals of the affected species have already been shot in north-eastern Europe, how stable the stocks are - in the Norwegian Arctic or the Russian taiga.

In the winter of 2014/15, they killed almost 10,000 woodcocks, 83,059 geese, 394,842 ducks and 552,340 pigeons, including several animals on the Red Lists of Endangered Species.

The lead shot used is highly toxic, and many animals die from lead poisoning because they eat the pellets. Up to 60% of wild geese pick up the poison.

Is species conservation meaningless?

However, designing an apocalyptic scenario is counterproductive. Bird protection has proved that concrete conservation measures can save endangered species. In 1990, for example, there were 150 pairs of sea eagle nationwide - today there are 790. The causes are the ban on DDT, which led to thin eggshells in bird of prey, the improved water quality and the renaturation of waters.

The stocks of cormorants and herons, black and white storks have increased again in recent years. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)

For further information:
Naturschutzbund Germany (NABU) e. V.
www.NABU.de
Charitéstrasse 3, 10117 Berlin
Tel. 0 30.28 49 84-0
Fax 0 30.28 49 84-20 00
[email protected]