Landscape‐scale responses of birds to agri‐environment management: a test of the English Environmental Stewardship scheme

Abstract

Summary1. Agri-environment schemes (AES) are used extensively across Europe to address biodiversity declines in farmland. In England, Environmental Stewardship (ES) was introduced in 2005 to address the shortcomings of previous schemes, but as for schemes in other countries, assessments to date have revealed little evidence for national-scale biodiversity benefits. 2. Here, we assess the efficacy of ES in driving changes in national farmland bird populations over the period 2002-2010, using BTO ⁄ JNCC ⁄ RSPB Breeding Bird Survey data. We tested for associations between ES management options, grouped into categories reflecting intended biological effects (e.g. stubble), and species' population growth rates, wherever benefits of management might be expected to occur. 3. We found strong evidence for positive effects of management that provides winter food resources (i.e. ES stubble and wild bird seed [WBS] crops) on population growth rates across multiple granivorous species, at three landscape scales. The results for management aiming to provide breeding season benefits (i.e. grassland, field margin and boundary [hedge, ditch] management) showed mixed patterns of positive and negative associations. 4. The results for stubble and WBS provide the first evidence for landscape-scale responses of biodiversity to AES management. The negative relationships identified may also show the importance of management context driving unforeseen predation or competition effects. 5. Synthesis and Applications. This study demonstrates that agri-environment scheme management has the potential to have national-scale effects on avian population growth rates, although our results suggest that some components of the scheme have had little effect on bird populations. Therefore, whilst this study provides the first proof-of-concept for broad-and-shallow scheme impacts on biodiversity, our results underline the importance of targeting towards populationlimiting factors, here winter food resources. A combination of low uptake of key in-field options that provide winter seed and a failure to cover the late-winter period effectively explains the lack of national population responses. Such issues need to be addressed before schemes like Environmental Stewardship will achieve their goals. This study shows the value of feedback from monitoring for informing scheme design, through identifying problems and testing solutions.

Learning from agri-environment schemes in Australia. Investing in biodiversity and other ecosystem services on farms

“…Despite this, other studies have found inconsistent results for different taxonomic groups for both simple and complex landscapes, and that the effect of complexity depends on the type of surrounding vegetation (Batáry et al 2011). Landscapes with a greater proportion of area covered by management demonstrate stronger positive biodiversity response (Baker et al 2012;Dallimer et al 2010), although whether this is in response to direct agri-environment scheme investment or greater inclusion of suitable landscapes remains unclear. A greater number of studies exploring the influence of surrounding landscape on agri-environment schemes success are clearly required to systematically investigate each of these conflicting elements.…”

Effects of breeding habitat and field margins on the reproductive performance of Skylarks (Alauda arvensis) on intensive farmland

“…In the United Kingdom, the abundance of Skylarks was positively correlated with the area of uncropped land on a farm, especially with uncropped patches with large perimeter-to-area ratios (Henderson et al 2012). In both the UK and Switzerland, however, Skylark abundance and population growth rates did not positively correlate with the surface area of field margins (Baker et al 2012;Meichtry-Stier et al 2014).…”

Integrating quantitative and qualitative data in assessing the cost-effectiveness of biodiversity conservation programmes

“…For example, in the case of farmland birds, Perkins et al (2011) report how bespoke monitoring was used to assess the effectiveness of a specific scheme in Scotland whilst Baker et al (2012) use more routinely collected monitoring data to identify spatial variation in scheme impacts across the UK. For more complex schemes involving multiple potential benefits, Mauchline et al (2012) and Pannell et al (2013) separately advocate the involvement of scheme participants in not only scheme design but also in undertaking monitoring activities.…”

“…Globally, most biodiversity conservation programmes are not currently evaluated in terms of their costs and benefits, or their rate of return on the original investment (Haddock et al 2007), though there have been some notable exceptions (see: Moran et al 1996;Metrick and Weitzman 1998;Cullen et al 1999;Cullen et al 2001;Finn et al 2009;Laycock et al 2009Laycock et al , 2011Perkins et al 2011;Baker et al 2012;Pannell et al 2013;Shwiff et al 2013;Cullen and White 2013). Assessing the cost-effectiveness of conservation programmes can be challenging for a number of reasons.…”