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Summary The Grey Partridge ( Perdix perdix ) is an iconic farmland bird that has declined on UK farmland by over 80% in the last 50 years. This decline was caused by poor levels of chick survival driven by agricultural intensification and primarily the use of insecticides and herbicides. These products reduce numbers of insects eaten by young chicks and the host plants that support these chick-food insects. Annual monitoring of such insects in cereal fields on a study area in Sussex, England over 40 years identified these insect declines and established how closely they mirrored pesticide use. Mitigation measures were developed whereby the edges of cereal crops received only selective or seasonably restricted inputs of pesticides to facilitate insect recovery. These ‘conservation headlands’ were demonstrated to improve chick survival significantly and have now been made available (i.e. funded) in the UK's Agri-environment Schemes, whereby farmers are subsidised to help declining wildlife species recover. Introduction Over the last few decades, concerns have been expressed about the loss of wildlife from farmland (Gregory et al . 2001). The work by the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust on the Grey Partridge ( Perdix perdix ) was some of the earliest research to voice and confirm these concerns, as well as quantify losses caused by pesticides (Potts 1986). The decline of the Grey Partridge is a well-studied example of a species of farmland wildlife under threat from the intensification of agricultural production (hedgerow removal, pesticide use, mechanisation). |
