Churches help to preserve bird biodiversity

CHRISTIANITY and conservation have not always gone hand in hand. Yet the structures raised by Christians to exercise their faith offer tangible sanctuary to some of God’s smaller creatures. Bats, famously, roost in belfries. And, according to a paper just published in , churches are also good places for birds. They are complex structures, with lots of nooks, crannies, rafters, holes and towers to sleep and nest in. Churchyards also often host a diverse collection of greenery and ancient trees.A team led by Piotr Skorka of the Polish Academy of Sciences set out to see just how good churches are as bird habitats. In villages dotted across the southern Polish countryside, Dr Skorka and his colleagues visited 101 of them, as well as an equal number of nearby farmhouses (known to be ecologically beneficial, too), to compare the number of species the two types of buildings host.