40% Of European Bird Species At Risk

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AMSTERDAM - "More than 40 percent of all bird species in Europe face an uncertain future and some are so threatened that they may disappear soon due to intensive agriculture and climate change, scientists said on Monday.

Many bird species, including the house sparrow, starling, wood warbler and corn bunting, have been declining alarmingly, BirdLife International said in a report. "The number of bird species in trouble across Europe is rising," said BirdLife, a British-based conservation group.

The report identifies 226 species, or 43 percent of all European bird types, as being threatened. Many of them are declining, while other populations have failed to recover from large declines seen in the 1970s and 1980s.

A number of bird species could disappear in the very near future if immediate action is not taken, warned the report "Birds in Europe," due to be presented at a European conference on biodiversity in the Netherlands later on Monday. The birds which face extinction include the sociable lapwing, a wader which breeds only in south-west Russia and Kazakhstan, the Mediterranean shearwater, a seabird from the Balearic Islands, and the Azores Bullfinch that lives only on one small island in the Atlantic, BirdLife says."

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