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?
A love of the natural world demonstrates that a person is a cultured inhabitant of planet Earth.
Mark,
you know damn well that when you bought Hype Farm you set up a matrix of 40-50 species to gauge the avian health of the farm - some species were there when you bought the farm , some weren't. The Hype Farm matrix is far more balanced than the FBI because it includes an even mix of red list, amber list and green list species which is in keeping with the trend lines of all british bird species generally. You also know damn well that if you used this set of 40-50 species on the FB Index then the graph would not look nearly so bad, the line would be far more horizontal. So why deny it and can't you understand the frustration of farmers like me who would like my farm analysed in the same way Hype Farm is to get a fuller picture of what is going on?
I would not deny that some bird species have seen significant losses due to changes in agriculture brought in during the 1960s and 1970s, you don't have to be a genius to work out that if you remove hedges then species such as yellowhammer which use hedges for nesting and foraging will suffer.
But farming has moved on since the 60s and 70s and the stats clearly show that. Its time the RSPB moved on aswell, you are fighting ghosts when you should be encouraging the current generation of farmers to build on their conservation successes rather than discouraging them by this permament media push and lobbying thrust of trying to demonise farmers as uncaring and causing some sort of wildlife armageddon.
EP
Paysan savant