Review
"This is essential not only in terms of providing a balanced view of both problems and potential solutions, but also in allowing the reader to work through the book without being completely bogged down in overly sentimental waffle. The book is most notably worthy of praise for the fact that 'everything is there: the history, the research, and the future."
--JOURNAL OF ANIMAL BIOLOGY
"This book is an authoritative and timely challenge to policy-makers, farmers, biologists and conservationists to work together quickly to find the right mechanisms to integrate the needs of wildlife conservation and food production in Europe."
--IBIS
"This book provides a valuable synthesis of existing and new information for biologists, policy planners, and land managers concerned with effects of agriculture on wildlife. The book is particularly strong in documenting and discussing the role of agricultural intensification since World War II in the dramatic declines in the diversity of farmland habitats available to wildlife, in the quality of the remaining habitat, and in the species richness and abundance of farmland birds in particular."
--THE AUK
"Open any bird or conservation magazine and you will see articles on the problems facing our farmland birds. This book...helps to explain the background to these problems and to offer solutions. It is worth a place on any naturalist's bookshelf. I thoroughly recommend it."
--BES BULLETIN
"The book is most notably worthy of praise for the fact that 'everything' is there: the history, the research and the future. If only all texts dealing with legislation and governmental policies were as informative and easy to read."
--JOURNAL OF ANIMAL ECOLOGY
From the Back Cover
Farming is the single largest land-use in Europe. It accounts for nearly one half of the total land area of the European Union and is consequently home to many of our most common and widespread birds, as well as to those adapted to particular agricultural landscapes. However, until relatively recently, the conservation importance of farmlands went unrecognised. Furthermore, much of the special value of farmlands has been lost or degraded in recent years as a result of the unprecedented rate of development of new and environmentally damaging land management techniques. Many farmland birds are now in sharp decline, or threatened with local extinction, as a result of the sorts of agricultural intensification encouraged by the Common Agricultural Policy and other related national policies.
Across the EU, wherever traditional low-intensity farming systems remain, nature conservation value also persists, although such landscapes are increasingly under threat. Where intensification has been rapid much value has already been lost and wildlife of all kinds has suffered. Grassland conversion to crops, drainage and irrigation, chemical applications, new crops and crop pattern changes, loss of marginal habitats and changes in stocking rates have all played their part. In addition, the concentration on areas of high production potential has often led to the abandonment of less productive land where traditional low-density management was beneficial to wildlife.
In this book, an international cast of authors highlight all aspects of these problems from the socio-political pressures on farm policy to the effects of management on a variety of bird species throughout the more and less developed parts of the EU. They go on to consider how the much needed changes in the CAP have and can be tailored to benefit birds and wildlife through such initiatives as the Agri-environment Regulation.
It is vital that the current moves to change the CAP take conservation into account such that the twin concerns of conservation and sensible farm production can be dealt with at once, and quickly. An opportunity to fully achieve a truly sustainable European farm system is at hand and not to be missed. This book provides much of importance in seeing that a sensible conclusion is reached, both for the needs of the farmer and for the birds and wildlife of our countryside.
