Green,
A., Winspear, R. and Lewis, K. (2007). Integrating Strategies for Wildlife Management
into Agri-environment Payment Schemes: A Decision Support Approach. EFITA/WCCA
Conference Glasgow, July 2007.
Abstract
The Entry Level Stewardship scheme gives farmers in England access
to payments for managing their farms for the benefit of wildlife. Points are awarded for
adopting a number of management practices from a list of options, and when a threshold
value has been reached payments are calculated on an area basis. However, if biodiversity
is to benefit as much as possible for a given expenditure of time and effort on the part
of the farmer, and money on the part of the government, then careful selection of options
is imperative. Farmers cannot be expected to have a detailed knowledge of the ecological
requirements of different species; therefore, options are likely to be chosen that meet
the scheme’s points requirements for the minimum of cost and effort. This paper
describes one approach taken that addresses this problem.
The University of Hertfordshire and Royal Society for the
Protection of Birds (RSPB) have produced an interactive software tool that allows a more
informed choice of options to be made. This uses a questionnaire approach to obtain
information on a farm’s habitat features in order to provide site-specific
recommendations. An initial wildlife assessment is made of the options being considered by
the farmer. A detailed understanding of the ecological requirements of important bird,
animal and plant species, appropriate to farms of different types is then used to
determine any gaps in the requirements met by the selected options, and to highlight
alternative or additional options that will fill these gaps. Although, such a system
cannot guarantee that farmers will select the options that will maximise wildlife benefit,
it does provide them with the information they need to make informed decisions, and
therefore offers the possibility of environmental improvements over a significant area of
the country.
Full paper
The full paper can be downloaded from the 'Conferences and
Seminars' section of the EFITA website. |
