I see on birdguides this morning that the RSPB has released a report on declining wader nesting success on upland areas and among other things crow and fox predation from increasing forestry is being blamed. Bit of a problem when they are planting trees to encourage black grouse.
BW, you may be right, but possibly you are not comparing like with like. Monoculture forestry of tree species mostly not native to uplands when these actually were forested provides potential breeding sites that are safe for corvids (and fox dens), whereas the 'planting trees to encourage Black Grouse' is aimed at native species that tend to grow at low densities.
One huge experiment to support the conversion of steppe in what is now an independent Ukraine was to plant thousands of kilometres of tree shelter-belts (comprising rapidly-growing tree species) to help retain soil when the steppe had been ploughed and was subject to characteristic md-continent winds. The steppe had been the home of many well-adapted ground-nesting (naturally!) bird species, but when the shelter-belts began to mature, the Rook population of the steppes grew from zero to millions in a short period. Of course Rooks consume many soil-living creatures once ploughing is regular, but they did devastate ground-nesting bird populations, some steady breeding distribution expansions being abruptly reversed (
eg of Black- and Red-headed Buntings.
Industrial agriculture across Europe has led to a wide range of bird population declines, and still does (compare bird densities in the former Eastern Germany at the time of unification with the then West Germany and also with present trends in the former EG). What seems to be indicated by the set-aside overall results are concerns in two areas: the extent of habitat loss has been such that relatively small-scale (despite the costs of compensation schemes) and simple countermeasures alone are not enough, which leads to the other area of concern, namely were there sufficient resources available to carry out continuous monitoring of a sufficiently large enough sample size of sites? A corollary here is the unmeasured extent of those approved and paid-for schemes where recipients simply didn't put any land into set-aside or left only a fraction of the agreed area in set-aside condition.
I've done bird survey work over agricultural land in various places. Subjectively, my experience was that, generally, those farmers to whom I talked beforehand and who expressed a clear understanding of the relationship of farming in the context of the land had greater bird densities on their land than did those who granted access with seeming sufferance.
This divide did not follow the small-farmer/agricultural group divide, nor the lowland/upland divide. I grew up amongst farmers and so have no axe to grind from the perspective of a 'townie', but hard economics often constrains any decisions farmers may devoutly wish to take in favour of the countryside/environment. Given the current inflation in the price of staple foods on the world market and given that much of Western Europe's agricultural productivity is on land that is beginning to decline overall, it is possible that the extent of habitat loss in places may have passed a 'tipping point'.
MJB
PS 'Toffs-with-guns' farms were much more reluctant to cooperate with bird surveys, but those that did followed the divide I've discussed
