The drive to squeeze ever more food from the land has sent Europe's farmland wildlife into a precipitous decline. How can agricultural policy be reformed so that we have fewer grain mountains and more skylarks? The Roman poet Catullus lamented the death of a pet sparrow ("Passer mortuus est meae puellae"), probably a house sparrow (Passer domesticus) or, just conceivably, a tree sparrow (P. montanus). In either case, a present-day Catullus would have ample cause for lamentation. Both kinds of Passer are among the many species of birds, invertebrates and plants that have declined dramatically in Northern Europe during the past 25 years.
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机译：从土地上榨取越来越多食物的动力使欧洲的农田野生动植物急剧下降。如何改革农业政策，使我们的粮食山少而云雀多呢？罗马诗人卡图卢斯为一只宠物麻雀（“ Passer mortuus est meae puellae”），一只麻雀（Passer domesticus）或一棵树麻雀（P. montanus）的死亡而感叹。无论哪种情况，当今的Catullus都会有充分的理由感到悲哀。在过去的25年中，北欧地区的鸟类，无脊椎动物和植物种类都大大减少，这两种过客都属于其中。
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