It cuts back on habitats for the birds".
The birds' rapid decline is attributed to intensive farming, urbanisation, encroachment on habitats, and failure to sustain fragile populations.
Last year Osborne set up a government review of how EU directives on habitats and birds are being applied in England.
We have to face up to the fact that as we are making increasing demands on habitats and exploiting animals more intensively for foodstuffs, the risk of zoonotic infections will increase.
The effects on habitats at the southern end of the lake, which includes the Sonny Bono National Wildlife Refuge, would also have to be examined, because the water there would be reduced.
From the sea to the land to the air, EU directives on habitats and birds have protected and enabled the recovery of wildlife, including dolphins, orchids and butterflies and the booming marsh-dwelling bird the bittern.
The comprehensive scientific report, compiled by more than 50 conservation organisations, spells out the destructive impact of intensive farming, urbanisation and climate change on habitats from farmland and hills to rivers and the coast.
Although the most recent annual decline of 5% might be down to a cold winter and recent changes to farming practice, experts believe the long-term trends caused by continuing pressure on habitats mean most of the 19 species surveyed are in trouble.
This is because, unlike the great majority of wildlife, they can survive in open landscapes without cover, and they happen to be highly resilient to the forms of destruction we deplore when we see them encroaching on habitats in other countries: cutting, burning and grazing.
