Tag-Eldin and colleagues also provide descriptive evidence from a nationally representative sample of schoolgirls that development and modernization may also be important drivers of declining FGC [ 5].
In particular, coronary heart disease mortality may have declined more in lean than in overweight and obese women, and never-smokers may have benefitted more than past or current smokers from drivers of declining vascular mortality other than smoking cessation.
Future studies could apply this methodology to systematically identify the drivers of declining heat-related health impacts, thereby informing the development of targeted interventions to mitigate the effects of heat in a changing climate.
The introduction of the American mink, which have escaped from fur farms in Britain since the 1920s, has been the single greatest driver of decline.
The report found "agricultural change was by far the most significant driver of declines", as a result of switching from spring to autumn sowing, which reduces food and habitat for many species, intensification of grazing, increased use of pesticides and fertilisers and loss of marginal habitats, such as ponds and hedgerows.
For example, the rate of forest loss is often cited as a chief driver of decline of wildlife populations (5, 6), but the impact of bushmeat hunting, also recognized to be a key driver, is rarely measured.
Numerous stressors have been identified, and human habitat modification is the single most important driver of decline.
However, establishing the relative importance of disease (among other threatening processes) as a driver of species declines can be challenging.
There may be two other drivers of decline: being hunted on their migratory journeys to and from Africa, especially in France and Spain; and the effects of a parasite, trichomonas, which is known to infect many of the birds.
