Does conservation on farmland contribute to halting the biodiversity decline?

By D. Kleijn, M. Rundlöf, J. Scheper, Henrik G. Smith, T. Tscharntke. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 2011

676 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Biodiversity continues to decline, despite the implementation of international conservation conventions and measures. To counteract biodiversity loss, it is pivotal to know how conservation actions affect biodiversity trends. Focussing on European farmland species, we review what is known about the impact of conservation initiatives on biodiversity. We argue that the effects of conservation are a function of conservation-induced ecological contrast, agricultural land-use intensity and landscape context. We find that, to date, only a few studies have linked local conservation effects to national biodiversity trends. It is therefore unknown how the extensive European agri-environmental budget for conservation on farmland contributes to the policy objectives to halt biodiversity decline. Based on this review, we identify new research directions addressing this important knowledge gap.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/13d5462fd4ae12cc5018a9eb74a77512b1951a33

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Citations in the corpus

The role of agri-environment schemes in conservation and environmental management (2015, background): “The effectiveness of AES at attracting wild species is influenced by landscape structure, landuse intensity, and the ecological contrast created by AES (Kleijn et al. 2011).”
Interactive effects of anthropogenic nitrogen enrichment and climate change on terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity (2013, background): “(Butchart et al. 2010; Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity 2010; Kleijn et al. 2011; Pereira et al. 2010).”
Mitigating the impacts of agriculture on biodiversity: bats and their potential role as bioindicators (2015, background): “However, Kleijn et al. (2011) argue that where the aim of management is to 443 maximise biodiversity conservation, the focus should be on land which is already extensively 444 managed and complex as it will be easier to protect d gradation of this than to restore areas where 445 biodiversity has…”
Toward effective nature conservation on farmland: making farmers matter (2013, background): “With respect to the landscape-ecological set up of AES, scientists are trying to develop new concepts and management regulations (Tscharntke et al. 2005; Stoate et al. 2009; Boatman et al. 2010; Kleijn et al. 2011; Pywell et al. 2012).”
The decline of moths in Great Britain: a review of possible causes (2013, background): “Currently, there is little evidence that AES have benefited biodiversity, despite huge budget expenditure, at the national and European scale (Kleijn et al., 2011; but see Brereton et al., 2008).”
Where is the value in valuing pollination ecosystem services to agriculture (2015, background): “Leaving aside the question of whether conservation strategies targeting highly intensified agricultural landscapes is the best use of conservation resources (Kennedy et al., 2013; Kleijn et al., 2011; Phalan et al., 2014), there are clear problems associated with the expectation that investments in ”
Optimizing agri-environment schemes for biodiversity, ecosystem services or both? (2014, background): “some farmland birds), ecosystem service providers can be assumed to respond to both biodiversity conservation schemes and ecosystem service schemes (Kennedy et al., 2013; Kleijn et al., 2011; Scheper et al., 2013).”
Measuring the economic value of pollination services: principles, evidence and knowledge gaps. (2015, background): “The overall community composition from a landscape will be influenced by a number of local factors, including the intensity of pressures (e.g. agrochemicals) local foraging resources and the strength of a source population (Scheper et al., 2013; Kleijn et al., 2011).”
Retention Forestry to Maintain Multifunctional Forests: A World Perspective (2012, background): “…specialist species (e.g., Bauhus et al. 2009, Gustafsson et al. 2010); (e) maintaining connectivity in the managed forest landscape (e.g., Kouki et al. 2001); (f) minimizing the off-site impacts of harvesting, such as on aquatic systems (e.g., Clinton 2011); and (g) improving the…”
Protecting an ecosystem service: approaches to understanding and mitigating threats to wild insect pollinators (2016, background): “There is still debate as to whether currently available AES are 1140 enhancing farmland biodiversity efficiently (Kleijn et al., 2011), especially pollinators 1141 52 | P a g e (Scheper et al., 2013).”
Organic versus conventional systems in viticulture: Comparative effects on spiders and carabids in vineyards and adjacent forests (2015, background): “The current intensification of agriculture is leading to growing concern about the sustainability of farming systems, since farmland biodiversity has severely declined (Vickery et al., 2004; Kleijn et al., 2011).”