The impact of intensive agricultural systems on populations of wild gamebirds in the United Kingdom.

Abstract

In Britain work began in 1984, to devise strategies to overcome the problems associated with poor wild gamebird production on intensively farmed arable land. This work arose from studies initiated in 1968 on grey partridges in Southern England which began to identify the factors that had contributed to the observed 80% population decline over the last 40 years. (Potts, 1980, 1986).
The grey partridge is predominantly a species of Britain's lowland arable landscape especially cereal fields. The most important changes that have occurred on farmland coinciding with the partridge decline have been the intensification of grain production. Intensification has involved increasing field size, the removal of nesting cover, increased use of fertilisers, improved plant breeding, and the increased use of pesticides. Since the 1950s, both increases in the numbers of pesticides used (Table 1) and increases in the areas of cereals sprayed (Table 2) have occurred (Rands, Hudson & Sotherton, 1988).