Wildlife Gardening: Gardening For Wildlife in the UK, 1 by bonitin

bonitin wrote:
Not only in England, House Sparrows are in decline, but also in Belgium and in most of the European countries.
According to a Belgium report from the Bird Protection Organisation, reasons for that are multiple.
In big Belgian cities , the House Sparrow population has dramatically declined 80% during the last decade.
Major causes are lack of breeding places and the fumes of cars that excrete poisonous benzene that kills many insects necessary for the breeding of the baby sparrows. The first breed is still successful, but the second and third fails.

On the country site major causes are :
1. In the past farmers had about 1 meter of wild growing vegetation, bordering their fields. But now they don't leave any free space any longer or just spray it with herbicides.
2. the modern agriculture methods, where agriculture machinery doesn't leave any seeds on the field.

The situation is been taken very serious by the Bird Protection Organisation and every year they ask the cooperation of people to help them tracking the evolution of the population, by counting the couples of sparrows that occur in their gardens.