Most of us were probably taught that planting trees is good for the planet, good for the climate, good for wildlife, good for all of it. So it might come as a surprise to learn that in some landscapes, planting trees can actually cause bird populations to plummet dramatically. That is the precise argument of a new study, and the implications reach far beyond Japan, where the research was done.
According to a study, ‘Shelterbelts support edge birds but limit grassland and wetland specialists in agricultural landscape,’ published in the Journal of Environmental Management by a multidisciplinary team of researchers from institutions including Hiroshima University, the University of Tokyo, Kyoto University, and the University of British Columbia, rows of trees planted on farmland as windbreaks, known as shelterbelts, significantly reduce the abundance and diversity of open grassland and wetland bird species. The results are a blow to one of the most common assumptions in agricultural conservation, that planting trees on farmland is an easy win for biodiversity.
