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Your support makes all the difference.The plight of Britain's vanishing birds has driven conservationists to set up a £2m experimental farm to overturn intensive farming methods.
The plight of Britain's vanishing birds has driven conservationists to set up a £2m experimental farm to overturn intensive farming methods.
With lapwings, bullfinches and even blackbirds in rapid decline, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds believes the last hope for their survival lies in pioneering methods of cultivation to suit both wildlife and farmers.
The 450-acre farm, six miles west of Cambridge, will employ state-of-the-art technology as well as reverting to more traditional practices - encouraging wild plants, cutting down on pesticides, and leaving thicker hedgerows.
"We don't want to keep talking about the decline in bird numbers," said Alasdair Bright, a spokesman for the RSPB. "We have to move on and see if we can come up with some answers.
"We're not turning the clock back - we're looking to create the farm of the future and find a way for farming to develop that underpins the rural economy. This is far more than just another organic farm."
The cost of the £2m scheme, provisionally titled Hope Farm, will be met by fundraising and matching money from the Heritage Lottery Fund. So far £800,000 has been raised by donations from members.
The project comes three years after the RSPB and other wildlife organisations produced a major report that described the drop in bird numbers as the British equivalent of Silent Spring, Rachel Carson's devastating indictment of the effect of pesticides on wildlife in the United States, which was published in 1962 and effectively launched the modern environmental movement.
The report found that populations of the tree sparrow had dropped by 89 per cent in 25 years, the bullfinch by 76 per cent, blackbird by 42 per cent and the lapwing by 62 per cent. It called for a change in intensive farming methods, which utilise every strip of land and employ an armoury of chemical tools.
Numbers of the song thrush have halved in the past 40 years while collared doves have declined by 85 per cent, five pairs of corn bunting are lost every day and skylarks have declined by three million.
New techniques will be employed at Hope Farm. "We need to explore new technology," said Mr Bright. "There are new tillage techniques which mean you can plant seed in fields without removing the stubble that birds require to nest in. We're not saying we should go back to pre-industrial days. Haymaking was good for nature because it was done at the right time of year."
The farm will be run on a commercial footing: three quarters of it will initially be managed with conventional modern techniques while the other quarter will employ more experimental methods.
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