Reportage
Pesticides, climate, modernization, France is emptying itself of its garden birds
Audio 01:13
In French gardens, four out of ten species have seen their spring population melt away in ten years.
Mark Medcalf
Text by: RFI Follow
2 mins
In France, several thousand people spent an hour on January 28 and 29 counting the birds in their garden.
This is the traditional winter counting weekend organized by the League for the Protection of Birds (LPO) and the National Museum of Natural History.
The participatory science operation, Garden Birds, is one of the largest in the country.
In ten years, nearly 100,000 gardens have participated and 6.5 million birds have been counted.
This is enough to draw important scientific conclusions on the evolution of bird populations.
And it's a slaughter, especially for common birds.
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Minus 17% for blue tits and great tits.
Less 46% for black swifts and European greenfinches... In French gardens, four out of ten species have seen their spring population melt away in ten years.
This is shown by the data collected by the citizens of the Observatory
Birds of the Gardens
.
The reason:
intensive agriculture
which has decimated insect populations.
“
Because of the pesticides, which are there precisely to destroy the insects, well there is nothing left for the birds to eat,
explains Grégoire Loïs, of the National Museum of Natural History.
The young are malnourished, not fed enough and finally we have a so-called infant mortality for birds which is very very high.
»
Birds are also dying because they are finding it increasingly difficult to find a place to nest.
"
The buildings are getting cleaner and smoother, there are no more cavities for birds to nest inside,
" says Marjorie Poitevin, of the League for the Protection of Birds.
And for the birds that nest in hedges or in dead trees, there are fewer and fewer of them, whether in gardens or in natural areas
.”
Finally, the third reason for the decline of birds in spring: climate change, with in particular the repetition of heat waves.
►
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hello, it's finally the weekend of the great national garden bird count!!!
🤩
⌚️ It only takes an hour
🥳 It's fun
✍️ It's useful
🧐 No need to be an expert
▶️ We're counting on you to count the 🐦!
🙏https://t.co/1e8Zeato1k
— LPO France (@LPOFrance) January 28, 2023
“
Review our way of life
”
“
In the 1970s, there were less than ten pairs of white storks left, today there are more than 5,000;
the griffon vultures had disappeared from the Cévennes, now they fly in the Cévennes sky;
there was the peregrine falcon which was in agony, it nests in Paris
, affirms Allain Bougrain-Dubourg, president of the LPO, at the microphone of
Lucile Gimberg
of the France service of RFI.
So we managed to save the emblematic species, but we are faced with a probably more serious situation with the local species.
We must completely review the way of life as it was defined in the aftermath of the Glorious Thirties: erase intensive agriculture with the chemical procession, fight against artificialization, this is what the
IPBES tells us
, the equivalent of the IPCC for biodiversity.
»
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