Birds and Pesticides

The application of harmful pesticides on crops has long been considered as one of the drivers of the decline of farmland bird populations.

The latest paper in the SBS-funded research project into the effect of modern pesticide use, by Cannelle Tassin de Monatigu with Dave Goulson shows that large quantities of treated seeds, which remain on the soil after drilling, are consumed by a wide range of farmland bird species, with the potential to have significant negative effects on species numbers, both through direct toxicity, altering their survival, health and/or reproduction, and also through indirect causes such as food reduction and habitat degredation and loss. In the field study, carried out in East Sussex during the autumn of 2020, the chaffinch appeared to be most at risk of receiving a harmful dose of pesticide from seed-treated grain, as well the robin and woodlark.

Read more here.