Grassland bird food supply could be under threat from pesticides

Researchers have found 129 different pesticides on 23 cattle farms in Gelderland that likely have a negative impact on grassland birds. The Buijs Agro-services and WECF Nederland research agencies published a report on this in 2019, and have recently extended this research in collaboration with Radboud scientists, publishing their results in the journal Science of the Total Environment. "In spite of all the protection programmes in the Netherlands, grassland birds are disappearing at an alarming rate. International research reveals that a shortage of food for chicks is a widespread reason that they die off both in Europe and in America," says Jelmer Buijs of Buijs Agro-services, a PhD candidate with environmental researcher Ad Ragas of Radboud University. "With this research, we show that pesticides could have a major negative impact on these food chains." The researchers' took samples of the soil, feed, litter and manure at the 23 Gelderland cattle farms, 22 of which are participating in the bird protection programmes. They found 129 different pesticides in total, with the total pesticide content in cattle dung at the eight organic farms 43% lower than on the 15 traditional livestock farms. However, this difference was not significant, partly as a result of the extremely large variation between the farms.