Wild birds in crisis

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BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

You're listening to BBC Inside Science, first broadcast on the 20th of March 2025.

I'm Ben Garrett.

And in this week's deep dive into science, we'll be looking at why our UK bird populations are still in decline.

Also this week, welcome back to Planet Earth and thanks for flying SpaceX.

After two NASA astronauts were finally brought home to Earth, we asked why it was SpaceX that was in the limelight and what this might mean for NASA.

And I'm joined by science journalist Caroline Steele, who's rounded up all the big science news of the week.

What have you got for us, Caroline?

So I've got mysterious oxygen found in the deep sea, the journey of adventurous iguanas from the Americas to Fiji, and what science tells us about how to have a good day.

Sounds like a classic classic combo.

But first, the UK government via DEFRA, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, released a report last week on the population trends in birds in England and across the UK.

Worryingly, but maybe not surprisingly, the figures show an overall decline, across species used as indicators for the study going back to 1970.

Measured across five distinct habitat groups, the overall trend shows a drop by 16%.

But when we look at some of the habitats in more detail the picture is really stark.

Woodland birds have dropped by 31% and farmland birds by 61%.

Before we talk more about this I wanted to get a sense of what's really going on so I did a spot of bird watching yesterday with Bob Morgan.

He's a reserves officer for the Norfolk Wildlife Trust.

Long tail tip just coming through here.

Oh yeah.

They look like ping pong balls with lollipop sticks stuck in them.

They do, they really do.

They're beautiful little birds.

They are wonderful looking things.

Another one.

Another one's down here, yeah.

We're lucky to see those, but there are more birds that we can hear.

They're everywhere.

They are.

And you'd think by that we're in a big, beautiful, wild expanse of secluded countryside.

But we're right in the middle of a city, aren't we?

We are.

We're at Sweetbriar Marshes, Norfolk Wildlife Trust Reserve.

As you say, you could throw a cricket ball from here to the centre of Norwich.

And look, we have so many different habitats here.

There's reed beds, there's grassland, there's scrub.

I can see at least 10 species of tree.

It's a fantastic space.

How long have you been bird watching?

Well I've been interested in natural history as long as I can remember but I think I put my first pair of binoculars around my neck when I was 12 so 50 years now.

And you must have seen and heard differences across that well that half century.

What are the differences that you come across?

Incredible differences.

As a Londoner I think the most significant thing is the disappearance of the house sparrow.

Now, if someone had told me that peregrine falcon would be nesting on Westminster Abbey and would be hunting ring-necked parakeet, but I'd struggle to find house sparrow, I'd question their sanity.

Are we seeing the same sorts of things across the UK?

Are we seeing it in Bristol and Edinburgh and Cardiff?

Is this a localised thing, do you think?

No, we're seeing it right the way across the United Kingdom.

In fact, right the way across the continent of Europe, there's really significant changes in bird populations.

Do we see any common threads then in these causes for decline?

Is there a blanket reason?

I mean it's easy to say climate change but is that what's driving this?

Some of the reasons are climate change in that you've got shifting distribution of species.

More commonly it's habitat loss.

Since the war, agriculture has changed, we've lost our hedgerows, we've lost those little sort of scrubby weedy areas.

If we look around here, this looks like a jumble of trees and bushes,

reed bed there, grassland there.

We've got a stream here full of irises.

That's not common in our countryside now.

It's very tidy, very controlled and that's not what wildlife likes.

Right, I want to go find one of these chiff chaffs.

Right, okay.

Oh, there's a buzzard just above here.

Look, so we've got a busy road and you can see the traffic running backwards and forwards and circling above it is a buzzard.

Now that's certainly something that I wouldn't have imagined I would have seen 50 years ago.

And that's wildlife using this urban setting because the buzzards are looking for roadkill, they're they incorporate that into their lives aren't they?

That's right yeah so they can they can hunt along our busy roads but they do need spots like this to nest.

Well there's chiff chaff calling over the back here.

We've heard great tip.

Now that is one that I do know Bob because one of my cheats is it sounds as though it's saying teacher teacher teacher.

It does doesn't it?

I think it sounds like a squeaky bicycle pump.

What can I do?

What can you do?

If anyone wants to make a difference but they feel I'm not a conservation organisation, I don't work for the government, I've just one voice.

Is there anything we can do to help our birds?

There is.

I mean, one, you can join conservation organisations, you can volunteer just by talking about it as well and letting people know that it's important to us.

It's not just about the wildlife, it's about us too.

You know, who wants to live in an agricultural factory?

I want their wildlife and I want to see birds and I think it's a wonderful thing.

It enhances our life.

It was wonderful.

If you can, get out and do a bit of bird spotting.

Joining me in the studio to look more closely at what's going on behind these trends and what, if anything, can be done is Professor Richard Gregory from the Centre of Conservation Science at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

We did also ask DEFRA to join us on the programme today, but were told no one was available.

Richard, thanks for joining us.

What do these latest figures on bird populations show overall?

I think, as you say, they point to this overall pattern of decline that we've seen sadly, you know, the downward slide of bird populations alongside other wildlife, you know, flowers and plants and insects that people might be familiar with.

But I think, as you touched on, it's the patterns within the different habitats that tell a story, really.

Farm and bird declines are very pronounced, over 60% over the time period you talked about.

Forest woodland birds, again, declining very strongly over 30%.

And I think the other group that perhaps sometimes is a bit overlooked here are the group of seabirds that they've declined quite significantly, 25% or so, according to the latest indicators.

Just to sort of twist to the more positives that were touched on in your piece a bit earlier, some birds, you know, the buzzards are coming back, the red kites are coming back.

There are quite a few of the rarer, more localised birds, kind of some colonists that are doing well.

But overall,

the mass picture is common, widespread, abundant birds are declining in the countryside, certainly.

So the report looks at five different types of habitats.

But from your perspective, are we able to look at contributory factors here?

Are we seeing the same driving forces causing these declines, or is there something different across each of these different areas?

There are different patterns, but I think that the general patterns and they're the patterns that we see across the globe in terms of the big drivers of biodiversity loss, land use change, you know, particularly the way we've used the farmed land farm policy that we touched on a bit earlier.

Lots of pressures on wildlife there have been really detrimental to those common and widespread wildlife in the countryside, alongside lots of big changes as well as how we manage the land.

You know, how we're managing our forests, you know, is very different from how it was.

Habitat loss again, it's a cocktail.

And on top of that, people will be very familiar with climate change impacts and worry about them.

I think in the UK at this moment, there are both positives and negatives from climate, but whether they're going to be positive in the longer term is a bit more unclear.

But for now, that's a growing, growing threat.

And it's alongside other things, isn't it?

You know, growing emerging diseases from the way we're changing the environment.

And that ties into one of the, I guess, unexpected twists of climate change.

I think when most of us think of climate change, it's a warming or cooling or wetter or drier planet or environment.

But actually, it also incorporates the emergence of new diseases in new areas.

So we're seeing things like avian flu and things even affecting really common birds like blackbirds right now, aren't we?

That's right.

We have emerging diseases that are coming from vector-borne.

They're vector-borne diseases.

So things like mosquitoes can now extend extend their range potentially.

And that brings with it the risk of disease that might be in animals and the risk of diseases, the zoonosis, that might be coming into humans as well.

So, we don't wish to be alarmist here, but that there's such change in the environment that the potential threats are really quite serious, and they, in fact, they impact the wildlife.

And we rely on nature, the ecosystems for lots and lots of things, and they will impact upon us in time, too.

In terms of what's being done, now the UK government has committed to targets stopping the decline of nature within the UK.

They want to commit to protecting 30% of our land by 2030.

What does this realistically mean, and how feasible is that?

I think the first thing to say is that the UK government is kind of world-leading in some of the targets it's setting for nature.

And the aspiration there is really fantastic, you know, to halt species decline, to deliver on 30 by 30.

I think great things are happening in lots of places.

I think the worry is how quickly that is happening and if the actions are being pulled together in a coordinated fashion to really make it happen.

And being quite blunt, is that possible?

Do you think we can attain this by 2030?

I think it's a real challenge.

It's a real challenge that the Office for Environmental Protection's report in January

suggested we were quite a way away from those targets.

It's a bit of a stark assessment really, of where we are.

But at the same time, I think we

have much of the knowledge, much of the understanding, much of the tools in the toolkit to deliver this.

So let's just crack on.

Richard, thank you.

As I mentioned earlier, we did ask DEFRA to be here today, but they said no one was available.

They did send us a statement, though.

They said progress to restore nature has been too slow.

And they said, I quote, this government is committed to halting and reversing the decline of species.

We are working with partners to conserve iconic species across our protected sites and have set out our vision to protect 30% of land for nature by 2030.

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After one final delay last week, NASA astronauts Sonny Williams and Butch Wilmore have at last returned to home on Earth.

Touching down on Tuesday after their planned eight-day stay in the International Space Station turned into a nine-month stopover after problems developed with their return capsule.

With great fanfare, global media coverage and even a pot of wild dolphins seeming to celebrate their return, Sonny and Butch were brought back down with the help of the company SpaceX.

Watching the spectacular scenes play out live felt like a real moment.

SpaceX were the big story here.

So what's changing in how we operate in space?

And if we have SpaceX,

Do we really still need NASA?

Joining me down the line is Libby Jackson, head of space at the Science Museum in London and former head of space exploration at the UK Space Agency.

Hi, Libby.

Hi, Ben.

Why did NASA need SpaceX to bring the astronauts home?

Well, this story all started back last summer, and I think it's really important to underline that at no point were Butch and Sonny stuck in space, needed rescuing in space, stranded.

I know why these labels have come about, but it was always planned after the the problems that happened last summer that they would be coming back in about this time.

Butch and Sonny were the commander and the pilot on board the first ever flight of the Starliner spacecraft with astronauts on board, and they flew that to the International Space Station.

During that test flight, it was found that there were problems with the thrusters and the thrusters of their spacecraft,

sort of the steering, they really need to fire at the right time in the right place to get the spacecraft safely to where it wants to get to.

Boeing and NASA looked at the data, they looked at the thrusters and they ultimately decided that they weren't happy with the risk of Butch and Sonny flying back to Earth on that Starliner spacecraft with those broken thrusters or with those suspect thrusters

and that there was a chance that the re-entry would go wrong and that their lives might be in danger.

So back in August last year, NASA decided that they would send the Starliner spacecraft home empty and that Butch and Sunny would join the normal, regularly scheduled International Space Station long-duration cruise.

They've been carrying out science experiments, maintenance activities, spacewalks, and now at the end of that planned mission, it is the SpaceX capsule that has brought Butch Wilmore and Sunny Williams back to Earth safely.

Where has this relationship stemmed from, this partnership almost between SpaceX and NASA?

It's all part of NASA's drive to change how the contracts are working, how they send astronauts and indeed cargo to and from the International Space Station.

Now NASA have been sending people to space, other space agencies have as well, since back in the 1960s and the Mercury, the Gemini, the Apollo missions, the space shuttle missions.

NASA placed contracts whereby they bought their spaceship from industry.

They placed contracts.

A little bit like if you or I I were to go along and buy a car, and then we, as the owners, drive ourselves to and from wherever we're going.

And NASA had a team of people that they employed that would operate those spacecraft.

But what they wanted to do is to change to a model rather than buying the spacecraft from industry, they would just be buying tickets to and from space in the service in the same way that you and I, rather than buying a car, we might buy a ticket to take a bus journey or something like that, where the spacecraft, the vehicle is owned by somebody else and you just pay for the service.

SpaceX is one of those providers in the Dragon capsule.

And the Starliner launch, going back to last summer, is the second of those spacecraft owned by Boeing, those services that is owned by Boeing that NASA are helping to develop and come online.

And there is, in fact, a third run by Sierra Nevada, their Dream Chaser spacecraft, which we're going to hopefully see fly later this year.

Different options means that nobody has a monopoly, so there are competitive costs.

And if anything were to go wrong with one of the different transport methods, they have what we call dissimilar redundancy, a different way of getting to and from space.

So it seems like a different working format, different working relationship between government bodies such as NASA and private companies here.

But from my maybe naive perspective, when I watched this, SpaceX was all over it.

Is there a risk that these companies are going to almost supersede NASA and eventually kick it into the long grass almost?

Well, in some ways, that's the hope.

What we want to see happen is a transition from a government-funded, government-supported

economic ecosystem in space, which we've had for decades now, to a more open commercial environment where it's not just governments who are buying tickets to and from space or doing research in space, but that is opening up to anybody who has the funds and wants to buy a ticket.

We're seeing that.

We will see in time, in the next few years, the International Space Station will be retired.

It will de-orbit and it will be replaced by commercially operated space stations.

We've seen it in the past.

If you look at something like the airline industry, if you go right back in history, originally aeroplanes were a government RD research and development setup.

Airlines were government operated entities and it's transitioned to

commercial airlines and we want to see the same happen.

What this should mean is that we open up space to more people, costs should come down, we'll see new manufacturing, new activities take place in space, all of which, in the end, should push technology forward and bring benefits to everybody back on Earth.

And driven by companies in this way, I can see you're saying it'll allow more people up into space, it'll increase the,

sorry, decrease the cost actually.

Will it change the way we do research in space?

And will it potentially limit who goes into space?

Will it become an old boys club or worse?

I don't think we'll see a fully private commercial sector for years, decades, possibly ever.

The research that we can do in space really helps us understand biology, it helps us understand early phase drug development, understand how we age new materials.

There's lots of things that can be done.

And I still see that there will be a place for government-funded research, but by opening it up, you can have commercial applications develop.

You can bring more money into these areas.

With the changes in politics and economic cuts that we've recently seen in the new administration in America, are you worried about the future of NASA in particular?

I'm not worried about the future of NASA.

I think that we are in a period of change, but that's been true before this change of administration that happened in the United States.

We are moving to more commercial operations in low Earth orbit.

This has been in the works for decades.

It will evolve and it will change.

And where the Trump administration takes it may push forward some parts of space.

I hope that they still see the benefits that space brings back to everybody here on Earth.

The science missions that look down on Earth and tell us what's happening with climate change, the telecommunications that we all rely on every single day to communicate for our banking.

So, space is a really important place.

It does need government support for regulation and for protection so that we can use it into the future for many generations to come.

I think it'll be interesting to see how this develops.

Libby, I hear it's your first day at the Science Museum, so I won't keep you any longer.

Have an amazing first day and thank you for joining me today.

Thank you so much.

Right, we've still got science journalist Caroline here with us.

Caroline, you've been looking at all the big science stories this week.

What have you got?

Well, I want to start with dark oxygen, which kind of sounds quite exciting and mysterious, and I would argue that it is.

So like us humans, deep sea organisms need oxygen to survive which is a problem in the deep sea because we usually get oxygen from photosynthesis where plants convert light into oxygen.

In the deep sea there isn't any light, light doesn't travel that far.

So where do deep sea organisms get their oxygen from?

Well, scientists thought that enough photosynthesis happens at the top of the ocean.

Sort of drifts down.

Sort of drifts down exactly over hundreds of years, ends up somewhere else and they sort of thought that gives deep-sea creatures enough oxygen to survive.

Well they don't need much, they don't move very much.

That's true, they are quite stationary and lazy.

But about a decade ago a biologist called Andrew Sweetman was looking at oxygen concentrations with depth.

Interestingly, he found a high concentration of oxygen at the very deepest point in the ocean.

Now That was so unexpected and went so against scientific understanding at the time that he sort of wrote that experiment off.

He thought, I'm quite a junior scientist.

Maybe I did something wrong with my equipment.

I'm going to get on with my scientific career.

We've all been.

But in 2021, he found himself doing the same experiment, and yet he found the same results.

So what's going on?

One of the things he did is he had a look at these things called polymetallic nodules.

They're sort of, I don't know, dark potatoes.

We've actually had one on Inside Science a few weeks ago.

So Andrew had a look at these polymetallic nodules in a lab and he basically found when he left them in salt water, they increased the oxygen content of the water.

So he published a paper in 2024 saying I think I found the source of this oxygen, I think it's coming from these nodules and I think they're splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, which caused a huge conversation in the scientific community because these nodules contain some pretty important things.

They're really rich in manganese, nickel, cobalt and deep sea mining companies have their eyes on them.

But there might be another twist.

Chao Min's son at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing says he's discovered two species of deep-sea bacteria that could produce large quantities of oxygen, enough oxygen to explain this phenomenon, which would blow Andrew's hypothesis out the water.

Andrew has commented on this and said in his experiment he tried to remove all the bacteria, but he can't guarantee he got it out of all the pores.

And he sort of said, you know what, Sun's work could be right, but it's worth saying that Sun hasn't published a paper on this yet.

It's not been peer-reviewed.

So it's all very up in the air, but it's incredibly important because without knowing how oxygen is formed in the deep sea, we can't sort of make informed decisions about deep sea mining.

Plus, if the bacteria theory is right, there's a cool bonus.

The bacteria creates oxygen by basically converting nitrates in the ocean into oxygen.

And on planets like Mars, we have a lot of nitrates.

So this sort of ties back into our previous story in the sense that if we're looking to support humans on other planets, maybe we could go there with some bacteria, change the nitrates into oxygen, and that could be a way of surviving.

I love that something so deep sea is potentially linked to habitat protection, like we talked with Richard earlier, right through to space exploration.

Okay, brilliant.

Lizards on rafts.

What's this?

So.

Most iguanas live in the Americas, right?

So in Mexico, they have a nice life on a beach is how I picture them.

Interestingly, they also live in Fiji.

So this has long been a puzzle for scientists.

How did iguanas get from the Americas to Fiji, which is...

The other side of the Pacific.

For those who aren't up in their geography, it's a long way away.

8,000 kilometers of ocean away.

Yeah.

So quite perplexing.

The sort of dominant theory until recently has been that millions of years ago, back when the Earth looked very different, continents were closer, sea levels were lower, so there were sort of land bridges between islands.

It's thought that the iguanas maybe walked across potentially Europe, Australia, found their way to Fiji.

Not one single iguana, which is how I first found that.

Family of iguanas.

But also iguanas, they're not known for their high athletic output are they?

No, so this would have been generations of iguana over a very long period of time.

But the theory has changed now because in a paper published this week, researchers from the University of San Francisco have sequenced iguana genes in Fiji and other places and have found that their closest relatives are desert iguanas from North America.

And interestingly, they only split 30 million years ago, which doesn't fit with the land bridges idea because 30 million years ago, Earth looked quite similar to now.

Blink of an eye, isn't it?

Yeah, which means the iguanas somehow got to Fiji when there was 8,000 kilometers of ocean.

And the theory is, is that they must have got there on rafts of vegetation, on like months-long expeditions.

Expeditions is maybe personifying the iguanas too much.

I'm picturing like a group of iguanas being like, we've built our raft, let's go.

You've got an animated film in your head, haven't you?

Yeah.

Okay.

And that's really important for biogeography, to understand how different species end up in different areas, both historically, prehistorically, and modern times as well.

Lemurs in Madagascar, reptiles in the Galapagos, including iguanas.

Exactly, because this would be a world record for the furthest land-dwelling vertebrate has travelled.

So it kind of might change the way we think about other species where we've said, you know, there's no chance they got to whatever location via a raft in the ocean.

That's impossible.

But if these iguanas can manage it, maybe other species can.

Although it's worth saying that these iguanas are kind of built for this because they're desert iguanas, they can survive a really long period of time without drinking.

And also they're herbivores, so they probably just sort of nibbled on their raft as they went.

I think to really quantify this, we need to now say whether iguanas get seasick.

And finally, what's your last story?

This is something that affects all of us every day.

A group of researchers at the University of British Columbia in Canada have gone about figuring out what separates a good day from an average one.

So they analyzed data from a 2013 and a 2021 American time use survey where basically they measured the time that thousands of people spend doing more than 100 activities and then they've matched up activity times with how people viewed their day.

So before I reveal the results, Ben, what makes a good day for you?

So I'm not talking like your perfect day on a beach for you, maybe running an ultra marathon or something, but what makes a good average day?

A good average day.

Nice weather.

Although I like bad weather.

Oh, interesting.

Weather.

If there's weather, I'm happy.

Take the dogs out, being outside,

having some time to myself, but I guess having some time with family.

I've got to say family, they might be listening.

Okay, that really ties in with what they found.

So they found times playing sports and exercise has a positive effect on how we view our day, up to five hours.

The most important activity is general socialising and that has a lot of benefits up to two hours.

Interestingly, spending time with friends though had an endlessly positive effect.

I would have expected working to have a negative effect, but that isn't what the research found.

So up to six hours of work didn't have any statistical effect on whether or not people saw their day as good.

But more than six hours had a quite quickly negative response.

And the last one I want to mention is commute.

So what would you expect them to find about commutes?

Any commute is not going to tick a box in terms of happiness there.

So that's what I would have thought.

But in 2021, commutes, as long as they were under 15 minutes, which to me would be a dreamy commute, actually improved people's days, which they sort of guess is probably because that was during the pandemic.

And if you were going into work at that time, that probably had a significant improvement on your mental health and how you viewed that day.

So for the perfect day, we want time with friends, general socialising, work up to six hours, don't commute longer than 15 minutes and do up to five hours of exercise.

Right, deal.

Sorted.

I'll let you know.

Brilliant.

Thanks, Caroline.

As ever, we'd love to hear from listeners.

So email us at insidescience at bbc.co.uk with your science questions and ideas.

You've been listening to BBC Inside Science with me, Ben Garrett.

The producers were Sophie Ormiston, Dan Welsh, and Jerry Holt.

Technical production was by Gwynfer Jones.

The show was made in Cardiff by BBC Wales and West.

To discover more fascinating science content, head to bbc.co.uk, search for BBC Inside Science, and follow the links to the Open University.

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