Bird damage to sunflower: international situation and prospects

Abstract

Bird damage to sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) degrades the profitability of this crop and calls into question its place in rotations. Our international literature review shows that sunflower is one of the crops most vulnerable to bird attacks. However, these predatory pests are not specialized: if the sunflower is affected in one region, then the other crops sharing the same cycle could also be affected to varying degrees. All production areas are affected by flowerhead damage at maturity. Damage at emergence has recently become more visible in France, Italy and Switzerland, probably as a result of global changes and evolving farming practices. Birds are highly mobile pests with complex behaviour. The problem needs to be tackled in a hierarchical framework that takes into account field, landscape, and regional scales, along with processes at different timescales from rapid field selection to long term demographic trends. Moreover, the distribution of damage is asymmetrical: few fields are affected, but with a high severity. At this time, there is no single effective method for preventing damage, and coordination at the landscape scale should be initiated to find potential solutions. Finally, there is a gap between theoretical and applied knowledge, even though initiatives in North America have helped to move research forward. These difficulties imply an integrated approach combining partially effective methods, the association of several stakeholders, and the coordination of several policies (agricultural, environmental, and recreational hunting or wildlife management). Additionally, data collection appears essential to acquire knowledge about economic damage and efficacy of control programmes. Digital technology can be useful for such purposes. Finally, this review advocates international networking to consolidate a research community on this topic and on the wider issue of bird damage to crops.

Linking plant and vertebrate species to Nature’s Contributions to People in the Swiss Alps

“…arboviruses such as chikungunya, dengue, or zika), which tend to shift their distribution towards higher latitudes under global warming 45 . Regarding vertebrates as a whole, the close to balanced positive and negative relationships observed for the “reduction of species damage and disease vector species” NCP (16 positive vs 15 negative for mammals, and 17 positive vs 14 negative for birds) can be explained by the fact that numerous species, including rodents or passerine birds, are considered to be species damaging cultures or affecting habitat structure 46 – 48 . Next, according to Horsley et al 49 , “the term ‘iconic species’ is rarely explicitly defined but is generally used to describe species that share taxonomic similarities with the charismatic megafauna of flagship species”, and the “popular interest in vertebrates does not reflect extinction risk and is associated with bias in conservation investment” 33 .…”

Review of effectiveness of visual and auditory bird scaring techniques in agriculture

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