'EU farming policy must protect birds'
Farm pesticides and weedkillers have had a devastating effect on Europe's bird populations, according to a new study.
Numbers among 24 species have crashed by a third since 1980 as a result of chemicals used in intensive farming, it claims.
The trend affects birds from Spain to Poland and includes the UK with big reductions in skylarks, lapwings and yellowhammers.
Britain's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds said the declines have been worst in countries in north-west Europe.
In the UK, intensive agriculture with the use of chemical pesticides and herbicides to boost crop production, has squeezed wildlife out of many former strongholds.
Previous RSPB research has shown that the population declines of farmland birds have been greatest in those European countries with the most intensive farming system.
In the UK between 1970 and 1999, the skylark had declined by 52%, the yellowhammer by 53% and the corn bunting by 88%.
With only just over 100 days to go until ten countries join the EU, 25 European members of BirdLife International including the RSPB, are calling on the European Commission and governments of member and accession states to put the environment and wildlife at the heart of farming policy.
Otherwise, the coalition says, wildlife and the environment will continue to suffer.
Out of the 453 or so species of bird occurring regularly in Europe, 150 are reliant on sustainable farming for their future survival.
Birds at most immediate risk are those particularly vulnerable to intensive agriculture such as the corncrake, the red-backed shrike and the great bustard.
These are birds which have been lost as regular breeding birds from England and much of north west Europe and which will be threatened by agricultural development elsewhere in Europe.
Currently, eastern European states have significant populations of these birds.
