My local football team, the mighty Rushden and Diamonds is currently 8th in the Blue Square Premier League - that's 8th out of 24 teams.
Seeing your performance in the context of others is always informative and sometimes really useful.
So did you know that the UK is 4th place in the EU (out of 27) for the highest rate of income tax? and 12th, out of 15, EU countries in the proportion of our energy coming from renewable sources? and top of the EU cocaine using league? and top of the EU asthma suffering league? and we were 8th in the EU days lost to strikes league table back in 2006. This gets a bit addictive!
In terms of farmland bird population changes, the UK is 11th worst out of 40 European countries over the period 1990-2000. And we were even closer to the bottom, as I remember it, in a previous analysis which covered the period 1980-1990.
Farmland birds declined in most European countries (but increased in just a few) and I wonder what we can learn, maybe nothing, in terms of how the league leaders, Austria, practise their farming? In Austria, farmland birds did pretty well apparently. And Austria is top of the league, it seems, and if you ignore Liechtenstein (which we all do!), in terms of organic agriculture. It can't be that simple can it?
Well Mark although i feel you are exasperated in a funny way this thread has given you the chance to let us have a lot of information that we seem not to search out for one reason or another so think you should see the positive side of it.Think it is just going to be a slow job getting majority of farmers on board and while you often give praise to individual farmers one or two comments from others at RSPB undermine some of the good you do as it is a fact of life whether we like it or not farmers are thin skinned about criticism of farm wildlife that is often unfair on those doing a good job.
syldata - provoactive!
Blimey.....I spend a lot of time on climate change issues and have concluded there are two types of deniers, those who are just obsessed with some kind of world conspiracy , and those who have clear motives that put them in opposition.
To the former I keep saying that if climate scientists were any good at conspiracy we might have made more progress on fighting dangerous climate change, to the latter I just ask them to be honest!
So Essex Peasant - what kind of denier are you?
essex peasant - careful, peasants shouldn't revolt too much!
You are now slipping into just being completely negative. I wonder why you can't acknowledge the success at Hope Farm? Why is it so difficult for you to praise what has been achieved there?
I don't think you are right about bird numbers at Hope Farm. We have surveyed all bird species there since we acquired the farm - over 100 species recorded (not sure what the total is now). We monitor all breeding and wintering bird species and lots of non-birds as well. If we didn't count everything then we'd be mad, and you would probably say so! But we have consistently (after a few years, so that there is a trend to look at) used the Farmland Bird Index when describing the bird numbers at Hope Farm because that's been an important measure of farmland bird populations at use in policy discussions for years (in fact, since 1999 or so). You can find examples of us using the FBI at Hope Farm on this the RSPB website if you doubt it - I've just checked.
And I will leave it to others to check what we say about farmers to judge whether you are correct when you say that we 'demonise farmers as being uncaring'. Have a look at this blog and the RSPB website as a whole. The internet does make it a lot easier for anyone to see what we actually say rather than rely on your inaccurate version of what we say. To start with - do have a look at the recent blog on stone curlews mentioned in my remarks to Sooty above.
Bob - you understand at least! Thank you!
Farmers are putting back many hedges that were ripped out back inthe 60s and 70s but it will, unfortunately, take quite a whole before in arable regions the hedge infrastructure has recovered completely and that means that linnets and yellowhammers may not be able to revcover very quickly - at Hope Farm hedge management has helped them to spread to new nesting areas on the farm.
The move away from mixed farming is one of the important aspects of intensification and is unlikely to be reversed very quickly.
But Hope Farm shows that if farmers do the right things, and grants to do these things are available through agri-environment schemes, then impressive increases in bird numbers are possible on arable farms with reduced hedgerows. The RSPB's success at Hope farm shows what can be done and we have a network of advisors who work with keen farmers so that they can do similar things on their farms.