Managing biodiversity rich hay meadows in the EU: a comparison of Swedish and Romanian grasslands

Abstract

SUMMARYSemi-natural hay meadows are among the most biodiversity-rich terrestrial ecosystems, and are managed for conservation purposes in most of Europe, including Sweden. Romania has some of Europe's largest areas of grasslands still managed with traditional methods. Through interviews and field studies, current management practices were investigated in two Romanian villages, and compared with CAP-generated grassland management in Swedish hay meadows and historical Swedish management of grasslands. The study evaluated the effect of the eligibility criteria within both countries' National Rural Development Programmes (NRDPs) on different ecologically important components of hay meadow management. The success of Swedish management was measured by assessing population trends for 25 grassland plant species. Current management proved to be considerably more diverse in Romania than in Sweden, but historical Swedish management was similar to management in Romania. Both countries' NRDPs provide support for some management components, but create barriers against other components. The Romanian NRDP contained more barriers than the Swedish NRDP, yet Swedish management showed little success in preserving grassland plants. NRDPs should nourish the use of local and traditional knowledge in order to preserve biodiversity in semi-natural grasslands. There are major limitations in both countries' NRDPs.

Bio-cultural refugia—Safeguarding diversity of practices for food security and biodiversity

“…Historic agricultural landscapes, 5 reservoirs of thousands of years of experience, persist in remote, marginal, and mountainous areas and are re-emerging in parts of Eastern Europe (Netting, 1993;Beaufoy et al, 1994;Jarvis and Hodgkin, 1999;Negri, 2003;Eyzaguirre and Linares, 2004;Emanuelsson, 2010;Dahlström et al, 2013). These are the place-specific and unique bio-cultural refugia, where biodiversity in agro-ecosystems emerged and continues to evolve.…”

What is biological cultural heritage and why should we care about it? An example from Swedish rural landscapes and forests

“…Maffi 2005, Pretty et al 2009, Wolverton et al 2014, Gavin et al 2015 and local rural communities (e.g. Galluzzi et al 2010, Dahlström et al 2013, Otero et al 2013, Cohen et al 2015, Vallejo et al 2015, Rangel-Landa et al 2016. However, some authors suggest that the concept should be applied more broadly, for example, as expressed by Cocks and Wiersum (2014, pages 733-734) that biocultural heritage "…should be extended to include the values and associated practices concerning biodiversity of any kind of either traditional/rural or modernized/urban societies."…”

The threat of abandonment in socio-ecological landscapes: Farmers’ motivations and perspectives on high nature value grassland conservation

“…Indeed agri -1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 17 environment funding can also drive extensification (Graf et al, 2014), the reverse of intensification, and in England funding schemes are used to fund restoration schemes (Natural England, 2009). However, the implementation of and eligibility criteria for such schemes vary considerably from country to country (Kleijn & Sutherland, 2003;Dahlstrom et al, 2013). Whereas, for example, schemes to support hay meadow management have been the most widely adopted of all in Switzerland (Knop et al, 2006), in the UK, most of the options relevant to the management of species-rich grasslands are discretionary and targeted, such as the Higher Level Stewardship schemes discussed in this work, and its new replacement Countryside Stewardship.…”