New article: Land abandonment in the Mediterranean and changes in bird distributions

Land abandonment is driving recent birds population changes in the North –western Mediterranean.

A new article in the journal Biological Conservation issued from the collaboration with the Montpellier group lead by Jean Louis Martin and Clelia Sirami and Bird Life (Ian Burfield) has analysed a set of studies on recent bird population changes in the north-western Mediterranean region.

By means of data integration through meta-analyses, the results shown the footprint of land abandonment and vegetation recovery as species of open habitats especially from farmland have tended to decreased. This was especially strong for migratory farmland species on farmland dominated landscapes suggesting that declines in these species are likely to be caused by a variety of mechanisms interacting with habitat change in the breeding season, the main driver of bird population change in the area. At the same time species of forests have generally increased over the region.

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Sirami, C., Brotons, L., Burfield, I., Fonderflick, J. & Martin, J.L. 2008. Is land abandonment having an impact on biodiversity? A meta-analytical approach to bird distribution changes in the north-western Mediterranean. Biological Conservation, 141:450-459.