Birds' decline shows wider damage to nature: study

Reuters: Dwindling numbers of birds worldwide are a sign that governments are failing to keep promises to slow damage to nature by 2010, an international report said on Thursday. Rising human populations and clearance of forests for farming or biofuels were wrecking natural habitats, according to the study by Birdlife International, which groups experts in more than 100 conservation bodies worldwide.

Even common birds, such as doves or skylarks in Europe, were becoming scarcer in a worrying sign of wider upsets to nature. Birds are among the best researched of all wildlife and are a barometer of the environment. "Bird species are slipping faster than ever towards extinction," according to Birdlife's "State of the World's Birds" report issued at an International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) congress in Barcelona.

…Alison Stattersfield, head of science for Birdlife and lead author of the report, told Reuters: "Birds are a good indicator for the wider environment because we have such long records. People notice that there aren't so many birds around, even ones that are common." she said….