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A study published today in Nature shows a strong correlation between concentrations of a popular neonicotinoid pesticide in water, and bird declines, writes Helen Thompson. Regulators are under pressure to tighten up, but the industry still claims there’s ‘no substantiated evidence’.

Let me tell you about the birds and the bees: A family of pesticides called neonicotinoids has been linked with pollinator declines.

While their involvement in bee colony collapse is hotly debated, ecologists are wondering: could neonicotinoids impact something further up the food chain?

A new study published in
Nature suggests that birds and bees may share a common enemy. Dutch researchers have found a correlation between bird population declines in the Netherlands and higher concentrations of the common neonicotinoid pesticide imidacloprid in surface water.

“There is an alarming trend between declines of local bird populations and imidacloprid in the environment, which needs serious attention to see what we want to do with this pesticide in the future”, says Hans de Kroon, a co-author and plant ecologist at Radboud University in the Netherlands.

The researchers posit that the pesticide affects these birds by killing off their bug food supply.