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Linking birds, fields and farmers
Journal of Environmental Management 90 (2009) S185–S192
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Linking birds, fields and farmers Paul Swagemakers*, Han Wiskerke, Jan Douwe Van Der Ploeg Rural Sociology Group, Wageningen University, P.O. Box 8130, NL-6700 EW Wageningen, the Netherlands
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Received 21 March 2007 Received in revised form 29 August 2008 Accepted 9 November 2008 Available online 27 December 2008
The dramatic decline in the presence of farmland birds during recent decades has provoked much attention in agri-environmental policy and ecological research. However, the still limited understanding of the socio-economical mechanisms that govern the decline in bird presence hampers the formulation of effective adjustments in land-use and farming practices that could support the return of birds to farmland, i.e. the required fine-tuning of management practices. As a consequence, the existing agrienvironmental schemes that offer financial compensation to farmers for implementing generally simple and rather crude measures to stimulate the presence of birds have been limited in their effectiveness and subject to much debate. The objective of this paper is to provide a sociological appraisal of farmers’ experiences with meadow bird protection in a mainly dairy farming area in the Netherlands. The methodology combined visual map analysis, surveys, interviews with farmers and experts, and monitoring farmers’ discussions. The results allowed an assessment of (i) farmers’ views on historical changes in bird numbers in the area and the current distribution of bird nests, (ii) locally adjusted, fine-tuned management practices that were considered to be promising for protecting bird nests, (iii) the importance of farm management with ‘an eye for birds’, i.e. farmers and/or birdwatchers paying additional attention to the presence of nests and chicks before carrying out farming activities, and (iv) the views of key experts in the socio-institutional network in the case study area. The paper concludes that there are various promising options for fine-tuning farm management so it offers better bird protection, but it is expected that such measures will predominantly be adopted on less intensively managed farms. Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Multifunctional agriculture Farm management Farming styles Local knowledge Black-tailed godwit Meadow birds
1. Introduction In Europe, the numbers and diversity of farmland birds have declined rapidly since the 1950s (Beintema et al., 1997; Duncan et al., 1999; BirdLife International, 2004). This trend is partly related to the reduction and fragmentation of habitat caused by urbanization and development of infrastructure (Devictor et al., 2007) and partly to the destruction or decline in the quality of potential bird habitats bought about by the intensification of agriculture (Baudry et al., 2003). At the same time the process of agricultural modernization over the last decades has led agriculture to a seeming state of crisis (Marsden, 2003; Van der Ploeg, 2003). One aspect of this crisis is that ‘‘the use of natural resources is subjected to an undeniable process of degradation’’ (Van der Ploeg, 2006). Although ecologists have paid considerable attention to the phenomenon of habitat and bird number reduction, a complete understanding of the exact mechanisms that govern these trends is still lacking. This is certainly due to the fact that such an * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ31 (0)31 748 5969; fax: þ31 (0)31 748 5475. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (P. Swagemakers), han.wiskerke@ wur.nl (H. Wiskerke), [email protected] (J.D. Van Der Ploeg). 0301-4797/$ – see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2008.11.020
understanding requires the difficult combination of both social and natural sciences. A wide range of interacting factors and processes (Benton et al., 2003) are to be brought together. This task is even more difficult since meadow bird management implies an additional range of contrasting points of view (of e.g. farmers, local experts and scientists). Meadow bird populations are limited by the insufficient opportunities that exist in intensively managed grasslands for undisturbed nesting, hatching and rearing chicks. Disturbances that result in the loss of chicks include predation and damage to and disturbance of nests by farming activities, which often lead to parent birds abandoning the nests (Teunissen et al., 2005). Factors that affect the quality of meadows as a habitat include the level of the ground water table and soil life. Falling water-tables combined with more efficient field drainage, often involving levelling the surface with a scraper so as to eliminate small drainage canals where water might gather, make it harder for the meadow birds to search for worms with their bills (Beintema et al., 1995). Equally when searching for worms, the meadow birds depend on soil life, and thus on a healthy soil that contains a high level of organic matter or humus and with an open structure. Worms help incorporate organic matter into the soil, transporting manure and so on
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from the surface deeper into the soil, where it is converted into nitrogen (Smeding, 2001; Smeding and De Snoo, 2003). In recent years various policies have put in place to encourage farmers to adjust their management to better meet the needs of meadow birds. Often, farmers receive financial payments for these activities to compensate them for their efforts and to offset any production losses. Despite such public investment, the results of these measures have been limited (e.g., Kleijn et al., 2001; Berendse et al., 2004; Kahlert et al., 2007) and they are much debated. The management prescriptions in these agri-environmental schemes have mainly focused on field scale adjustments in the timing of operations, such as manure application and mowing or grazing of grasslands. They include delaying the first fertilizer application and mowing so as to allow chick hatching and rearing to be completed. More recently, on-farm experiments with more complex patterns of field management have been conducted that create mosaics of fields containing a larger heterogeneity of biomass, vegetation height and development stage, and we review these below. However from a policy perspective it is more difficult to set targets for these more detailed in-field adjustments, which depend more on the voluntary initiatives of farmers. Meadow birds are almost completely dependent on agricultural fields for their nesting and feeding and, as a result, farmers are one of the main witnesses of the changes that have occurred in bird populations and nesting behaviour. Some farmers have a strong personal motivation to protect the environment (Stobbelaar et al., 2009) and the birds within it (Swagemakers and Wiskerke, 2006). These farmers have partly adjusted their activities to needs of birds whenever this is possible within their farm. These adjustments often differ from the prescriptions entailed in agri-environmental schemes. Moreover, most farmers are aware of the increasing societal demand for sustainable multifunctional agriculture that not only provides food and fibre, but also other ecosystem services that develop and make use of ecological capital (Swagemakers, 2008). This awareness has been further stimulated by new institutional arrangements, such as the environmental cooperatives that have emerged since the 1990s (Wiskerke et al., 2003). These environmental cooperatives aim to support farmers in changing their management so as to improve environmental quality. These individual and collective initiatives can be assumed to have created a reservoir of good practices and insights that might be beneficial for meadow birds’ nesting and population development. This paper investigates this reservoir of knowledge. It is based on an exploratory case study carried out in the Dutch Northern Frisian Woodlands. Its objectives were to document the experiences of farmers in this area with meadow bird oriented management, to identify the complexities involved and to explore how farmers’ attitudes and practices can overcome other ecological and agronomical constraints. Section 2 of this paper outlines the characteristics of the case study area and the methodologies used. In Section 3 we describe and discuss farmers’ views about the presence of farm birds, the promising practices and the relevance of paying special attention to protecting birds and their nests. In Section 4 it is concluded that birdoriented farming practices involve building on ecological capital and any strategy for increasing the numbers and diversity of farmland birds needs to involve a wide range of actors. This applies especially since local knowledge, especially when articulated through study groups, represents remarkable contrasts vis-a`-vis scientific knowledge.
region is characterized by a small-scale landscape on predominantly sandy soils with dairy farming as the prevailing land-use. On some farms a limited proportion (of up to 5%) of the area is used for forage maize production, while the rest of the area is covered by permanent grassland, rotationally grazed and mown. The fields, with an average size of 2 ha, are often surrounded by hedgerows and frequently bordered by ponds. The average grazing season lasts for 6 months, from May to October. Grazing regimes vary from day and night grazing to restricted grazing (for instance only during part of the day) and zero grazing. The bio-physical farm and field characteristics and regulations for maintaining the landscape and land-use patterns have substantially restricted any opportunities for a widespread conversion to large-scale agriculture. As a result the region offers many opportunities to provide non-productive agricultural amenities. In the 1990s, the farmers were faced with strict regulations to reduce emissions of ammonia and nitrate. Environmental cooperatives emerged in the NFW as a response to policy interventions that set out the methods to be used rather than the targets to be reached. The cooperatives developed activities that could reach the targets of the policies with context-specific measures that were far more acceptable to farmers. In addition the farmers committed themselves to maintaining the historical landscape, which provides a strong sense of local identity for its inhabitants, and the cooperatives organized activities related to nature and landscape management by farmers (Renting and Van der Ploeg, 2001; Wiskerke et al., 2003; Anonymous, 2005). More recently, several environmental cooperatives in this area have merged to create a regional environmental, i.e. territorial cooperative ‘Noardelike Fryske Waˆlden’, which has established contracts with the Dutch government which rewards participating farmers for meeting environmental objectives (Anonymous, 2005). Initially, these objectives focused on reducing nutrient losses at the regional scale, but gradually more attention was paid to developing ecosystem services related to biodiversity and landscape, thereby converting ecological capital into societal interests at higher levels of aggregation (Van der Ploeg, 2008). In the early 1990s some research on farming styles was conducted in the region. Farming styles refer to differences in farmers’ notions, practices and embeddedness in institutional contexts, and for that embody specific devices for (re-)moulding the production process (Van der Ploeg, 1994, 2000, 2003). Farming styles differ in time and place, are locally specific and change through time. This approach was more recently applied to biodiversity maintenance in Austrian agricultural landscapes, which showed the negative effect of high land-use intensity on biodiversity (Schmitzberger et al., 2005). Although this study recorded the presence of both intensive and extensive styles, it did not show how farmers can compensate and correct for detrimental effects of intensive farming styles. However, Black-tailed Godwit chicks require substantial improvements in their feeding and survival conditions and such measures may not be enough unless they are quite specifically focused (Schekkerman and Beintema, 2007). By contrast, economical farmers depend less on external resources that have to be mobilized through the market. They reach higher levels of technical efficiency, and their practices are ecologically more sustainable (Van der Ploeg, 2000; Dominguez Garcia, 2007). Thus, it might be hypothesized that farming economically is a promising style of farming for the return of birds to farmland in the case study area.
2. Methods and materials 2.2. Research approach 2.1. Case study area The case study focuses on an intensively managed agricultural landscape in the Dutch Northern Friesian Woodlands (NFW). This
A case study approach seeks to provide an in-depth analysis of a specific phenomenon (Yin, 1984). Usually it employs a variety and combination of research methods which are generally combined
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(and validated) through a process of triangulation (Mathison, 1988; Verschuren and Doodewaard, 1999). The different sources of information used in this study include grey literature, on-farm observations and maps, together with interviews with relevant actors and the monitoring of organized discussion sessions of actors. The actors included in this study were: researchers (ecologists), local informants (birdwatchers, hunters), regional experts (representatives of the environmental cooperative), farmers (individual farmers as well as those involved in study groups), and politicians (at the national and regional level). The maps of distribution of bird nests were drawn by local birdwatchers to monitor the presence of four key species of meadow bird species in the area: Lapwing (Vanellus vanellus), Black-tailed Godwit (Limosa limosa), Redshank (Tringa totanus) and Oystercatcher (Haematopus ostralegus). The maps were assessed visually and discussed with birdwatchers, farmers and other stakeholders. In the NFW a total of 224 farmers were participating in agrienvironmental schemes in 2006 (with complete data of use for the case study). From this group, 48 farmers were invited by the expert coordinators of the environmental cooperatives to participate in study group meetings. The coordinators selected the group primarily on the basis of their knowledge about the farmers’ management strategies and prior knowledge of the number of nests on these farmers’ fields. All the participants had a strong idea (albeit sometimes informal) about the distribution in the area. All but one of the farmers agreed to participate in the project and the group of 47 farmers was divided, by locality, into 10 groups, each representing a sub-area of the NFW. Using a set of five Likert scales (which had been previously tested), the coordinators assessed the intensity and scale of farm management and the care taken for bird management (‘eye for birds’) of each of the farmers, based on their experience and knowledge of the farming systems. In order to determine the relations between farmers’ characteristics and the density of Black-tailed Godwit nests a stepwise multiple regression analysis was done that took Black-tailed Godwit nest density as a dependent variable (SPSS statistical software package). Variables used in the model included the locality in the NFW (S), the inverse of management intensity (M, scaled 1 ¼ high to 5 ¼ low) and a score for the farmer’s ‘eye for birds’ (E, scaled 1 ¼ low to 5 ¼ high). A p value of <0.05 was considered significant. The analyses focused on the number of nests found, i.e. used as indicator for the presumed presence of breeding pairs. However, there is a slightly different relationship between nests and breeding pairs for the different bird species (Wymenga et al., 2000). In general, for the Lapwing one generally calculates that there are more nests than breeding pairs, with the inverse being true for the Redshank (as not all nests are found) and the Oystercatcher (not all chicks hatch out of the eggs). For the Black-tailed Godwit the numbers of nests and breeding pairs are calculated as being equal. Although the calculation of breeding pairs would give a more accurate picture of the situation than the calculation of nests, there were several practical reasons for basing the analyses on the calculation of the number of nests: the presence of birds is related to nests, knowledge about the location of the nests of meadow birds is important for bird protection, and maps of bird nests were locally available. In addition, local birdwatchers undertook a detailed analysis of the distribution of bird nests within part of the NFW (53110 N, 5 550 E and 3100 ha). This area is largely open, with a relatively low density of avenues of trees and hedges. Only the eastern part of the area has a high density of tree cover, with hedges surrounding most of the fields. First the nests were mapped at farm level and then the individual maps were consolidated, providing a larger picture of the factors constraining the survival of chicks in the area. As such, the map represents a combination of the local knowledge of
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farmers and birdwatchers and provides information for understanding the distribution and reproduction of farmland birds. 3. Results and discussion 3.1. Spatial distribution of nests Maps of the distribution of nests in the case study area in 2006 showed an uneven spatial distribution of meadow birds. Some clusters of fields contained a relatively high density of bird nests (10–18 nests/ha), whilst others were nearly or completely devoid of nests. Regional stakeholders were not only very aware of the decline in bird numbers (Box 1, Quote 1.1) but were also aware of changes in the spatial patterns of nest distribution. According to older birdwatchers and egg collectors the spatial distribution has changed considerably over the past 30–40 years, when the different species were far more equally distributed over the area. Another difference mentioned by the experts was that previously the different bird species rarely nested in the same locality, each species had its own ‘pockets’, whereas today different species nest in the same fields (Fig. 1). One consequence of these spatial changes is that the distance between nests has decreased considerably. Lapwing nests were well distributed over the area (Fig. 2a) whereas there was an evident concentration of Black-tailed Godwit nests within confined parts of the case study area (Fig. 2b). Other clusters map contained mainly Lapwings and Oystercatchers. Redshanks nested together with other birds, sometimes in the fields, along the ditches, but mainly in the edges of the fields, close to the canals. According to local experts Lapwings also tend to nest in maize, which was observed in some fields in the case study area. Oystercatcher nests were also observed in the area with more maize fields. Black-tailed Godwits and Redshanks avoid nesting in maize unless a green manure crop (e.g. grass) is sown, but then the nests are left anyway when land is ploughed and prepared for seeding. Since Lapwings are aggressively protective against predators this means that Black-tailed Godwits do not benefit from this behaviour. Meadow birds generally return each year to the same specific area for nesting (Groen and Hemerik, 2002). This pattern carries on through different generations and stakeholders are aware of this process of site fidelity (Box 1, Quote 1.2). Avoidance of certain fields and clustering can result from disturbances such as intensive management practices, a lack of feed and the occurrence of predation (by both birds of prey such as Buzzards, Kestrels, and Grey Herons and animals of prey, such as Stoats, Weasels, and Foxes). The places where birdwatchers had found signs of predation in recent years were identified and marked on the map. These
Box 1. Quotes related to spatial distribution of nests Quote 1.1 (Leader of birdwatchers association) ‘‘It is a national trend that meadow birds are declining, in particular the Black-tailed Godwit. The population mature and less eggs are produced and less chicks are hatched. What can we do? When was the population large? That was in the 1950s. How did those farmers manage? Their practices coincided with the occurrence of many meadow birds.’’ Quote 1.2 (Farmer) ‘‘I had quite dark and quite light birds and those birds are back again. A neighbour mows in a crazy way, very early. But once finished, a habitat is destroyed and you won’t have it back easily.’’
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Fig. 1. Map of fields with different numbers of bird species nesting (white: no nests; green: nests of only one bird species; red: 2, 3 or 4 of the focus species nesting). (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
were often located close to elements of woody landscape such as hedges, bushes and trees, which can provide habitat for the predators (Teunissen et al., 2005). Fields in the vicinity of these woody landscape elements where the probability of predation is higher were found to generally have a lower density of bird nests, with birds preferring more open areas for nesting (Teunissen et al., 2005). One farmer had surroundings that signs of predation and fields that contained various bird nests. This raised the possibility that the continued existence of birds close to sites of past predation could be related to careful farming practices that provided protection against predation (see Section 3.2). 3.2. Bird-oriented farming practices A local farmer whose land was located near several predation points managed his fields so as to provide continuous and abundant protection for birds and especially for chicks. The survival of chicks is an important factor in reversing the decline of meadow bird species, particularly of the Black-tailed Godwit, as the chicks cannot fly in the first ten days after their birth. This protection was accomplished through a complex pattern of fertilization and harvesting, which followed a mosaic pattern, both between and within fields, thereby creating differences in grass height. Different (parts of the) fields were used for cattle grazing (both sheep and cows) and mowing was spread over a longer period. In this way, the grass was as different growth phases, thanks to the spreading of activities in the fields over time. In addition, this farmer mowed the edges of the fields just once a year, very early in the growing season, and reduced subsequent grass growth in these parts of his fields by not fertilizing these parts of the fields. One of his fields attracted nesting Black-tailed Godwits and this field remained untouched throughout the nesting period. High grass heights around the edges of the fields and in other parts of the fields could potentially protect against predators, but, according to the farmer, the chicks of Blacktailed Godwit were still vulnerable to birds of prey, even within the fields with higher grass heights. Thus for this bird species, clustering of species is likely to remain crucial as the Godwit’s chicks can be protected by the more aggressive Lapwing. In the opinion of this farmer, the simple application of ‘‘delayed mowing dates’’ as
proposed in many agri-environmental schemes for meadow bird protection was of no use. Farmers who mowed their grass themselves, rather than hire a contractor, found it far easier to create heterogeneity through mosaic patterns of harvesting (Box 2, Quote 2.1). Over the season, farmers have to cut grass from the fields at various times, and intensive farmers often hire contractors to get the work done rapidly. Mowing at high speed with big machinery (Box 2, Quote 2.2) caused what is locally referred to as ‘bloodbaths’. Even if a chick was spotted, getting off the tractor in order to catch and safeguard it would simply be too time-consuming. Instead, mowing at a slower speed and with smaller machinery (Box 2, Quote 2.3) combined with the habit of leaving the field for some hours if chicks were spotted (and start mowing elsewhere) helped the survival of chicks. Most farmers concerned with the protection of meadow birds in their fields owned farms that were characterized by extensive practices. According to these farmers it is easier to create good habitat conditions for meadow birds on such farms than on intensive farms (Box 2, Quote 2.4). They recognized that this is particularly relevant for protecting the chicks of the Black-tailed Godwit, which require longer grass to shelter in the field margins or on parcels mowed later in the season. Thus, a considerable menace at one level (a high presence of predators in a particular sub area) might be mediated (or compensated) by particular activities at other levels (farms and fields). This principle also applies if we consider the interaction between changes in farming and the presence (or absence) of meadow birds. 3.3. An ‘eye for birds’ Both farmers and birdwatchers expressed the view that having an ‘eye for birds’ was crucial, and became more critical if the farmer applied large-scale and intensive practices. Having an ‘eye for birds’ was relevant both when planning farm management activities and when carrying them out. Prior to carrying out farming operations with a potential for creating disturbance such as applying fertilizer or mowing, farmers, birdwatchers and other volunteers inspect fields in search of nests and mark these before starting the activity.
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a
b
Fig. 2. Presence of nests of (a) Lapwings and (b) Black-tailed Godwits per field. White: no nests, red: gradient of increasing number per field with maxima of 19 and 9 per field for Lapwing and Black-tailed Godwit. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
Cages are placed around nests before grazing commences so as to provide protection against trampling and other disturbance from farm animals. These practices have been proven to be effective in increasing the hatching success on mown fields (Guldemond et al., 1993). Another key aspect in having an eye for meadow birds, recognized by the local experts and interviewed farmers, was the ability to see the birds when out on the tractor mowing the fields. Nests might be marked within the fields, but the chicks still run around. And since the chicks like to hide in the long grass, one needed to have an ‘eye for birds’ and adjust one’s practices accordingly, either delaying mowing or carefully chasing off or catching the chicks before mowing. Management practices of farmers that have an ‘eye for birds’ might compensate for and correct what might otherwise seem to be detrimental practices. Farmers can either have an ‘eye for birds’
themselves (, Quotes 2.2, 2.3 and 3.1) and be aware of the needs and behaviour of different bird species (Box 3, Quotes 3.2 and 3.3), or allow the support of local birdwatchers in doing this work for them. Farmers expected that future changes in farm configuration are likely to reduce the attention for bird-oriented farming practices and the ‘eye for birds’, especially if delayed mowing regimes are presented as only option for safeguarding bird life in farmers’ fields. One of the farmers (Box 3, Quote 3.4) argued that agri-environmental schemes should provide more flexibility in applying context-specific bird-oriented farming practices that focus on the objective of bird protection rather than on the means of achieving it through prescribed practices. Farmers feared the further implementation of policy frameworks that drove farmers towards later mowing dates and/or one-sided financial support for extensive land use. Neither payment for agri-environmental schemes nor
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Box 2. Quotes related to bird-oriented management practices
Box 3. Quotes related to ‘eye for birds’ Quote 3.1 (Farmer) ‘‘I mow my own fields. Then one has more control over what happens in the fields. I am concerned with and engaged in meadow birds. The contractor, once he and his machinery are at the farmyard, has to get the work done.’’
Quote 2.1 (Farmer) ‘‘Now I try, by leaving strips of grass to grow longer, to create a solution for the birds. Mowing a part of the field later makes me have to go back there and that is what you get paid for in the scheme. I use a self-loading wagon. It costs me but I think it’s worth it.’’
Quote 3.2 (Farmer) ‘‘Between 10 and 15 of May the chicks just left the eggs, especially the Black-tailed Godwit chicks, and, being a week old at the moment of mowing, the chicks should find protection in the grass. For the Lapwing chicks things are different; those chicks move away to short grass, so they will manage anyhow. But one should not mow grass all at once, or too early in spring.’’
Quote 2.2 (Farmer) ‘‘The way in which mowing is organized is dangerous for birds. Some farmers mow with a cyclo-mower at one side of the tractor, others mow with both mowers in the front and on the side of the tractor, thus easily mowing 5 metres at once. You need to have an eye for where you mow. The contractor arrives with big machinery and even works during the night. From an economic perspective this is good: the best feed value is created and thus the most money can be earned. But it is of no use for birds. Having mowed, those farmers immediately start to shake the grass; then, the whole work in the field is against the birds.’’
Quote 3.3 (Farmer) ‘‘On my farm, many things work well by themselves. The sheep go outside early in spring. All the other grass on the farm grows, but not in the fields with the sheep. Then, the sheep move on to the next field. As long as there are sheep in the field, there are no eggs. As peace returns to the fields, the eggs are there.’’
Quote 2.3 (Farmer) ‘‘Over the last 20 years I have learned a lot about birds. If you enter a field with the tractor, you can see many things. you can observe where birds fly away and can conclude where the nests are probably located. If you do not drive too fast the birds can get away. Generally I drive at a speed of 5 km/h, whereas the contractor comes with larger machines and drives at 15 km/h.’’
Quote 3.4 (Farmer) ‘‘As the future is designed for farmers at present, everything has to be bigger and people face increasingly a shortage of time. Consequently, people no longer have an eye for the life in the fields. Some farmers push aside the life in the fields as they are afraid of rules. I do not participate if strict rules are implemented. But I am in favour of management conditions that can be flexibly adjusted by farmers. A budget should be created that allows farmers to do something that helps meadow birds to survive. Mind you, this standpoint is not supported by all farmers; I myself have an extensive farm and I can implement measures easier than an intensive farmer who is heavily in debt to the bank. I adapt my mowing scheme to the presence of birds in the fields as I have always been doing.’’
Quote 2.4 (Farmer) ‘‘There has always been a pocket with many breeding birds here in the area with farmers farming even more extensively than me. Before June, they were never on their fields, even though they had some sheep. The land was not drained, the fields had many molehills, and no artificial fertilizers were used. The land turned red and yellow due to Broad-leaved Dock and Buttercups.’’
payment per clutch (Verhulst et al., 2007) helps farmers combining agricultural production with meadow bird management. Neither instrument adequately supports farmers who care about farmland birds. The key might lie in developing farmers’ eye for birds. The following section discusses ways in which this might be developed and used to help sustain bird protection.
a significant relationship between the density of nests and the (non) selection for participation in study groups (c2 ¼ 45.42, df ¼ 3, p < 0.01). The density of nests was used to categorize farms (Fig. 3) according to policy guidelines that indicate less than 25 nests per
45,00
3.4. The views of regional experts
Not selected farmers (n=176)
Selected farmers (n=47)
40,00 35,00
% of farmers
We interviewed a wide network of stakeholders involved in bird conservation. One of the most important actors in the network appeared to be the regional experts who were coordinating activities such as organizing study group meeting for the environmental cooperatives. These experts were responsible for selecting the group of 48 farmers which included those with the most promising practices. These farmers were selected without prior knowledge of the exact densities of birds on the farms and all but one of them participated in meetings to share their knowledge about birdfriendly management practices. The frequency distributions in Fig. 3 show (calculated with data of 47 farms) that the density of nests was higher in the fields of the participating farmers than in those of other farmers involved in agri-environmental schemes, indicating that the experts were well-informed about the key farmers and areas for bird presence in the NFW. There was
30,00 25,00 20,00 15,00 10,00 5,00 0,00
0-24
25-49
50-74
≥75
Numbers of nests per 100 ha (for ≥75 ha on the condition that Black-tailed Godwit nests per farm ≥5) Fig. 3. Frequency distribution of farms with different densities of nests in their fields.
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Sub-area + 0.31
NS + 0.39
Farm mgt NS Eye for birds
Stepwise R2=0,42
+ 0.82 Interaction
+ 0.48
Black-tailed Godwit nests
+ 0.67
Fig. 4. Path diagram explaining the weighted quantity of Black-tailed Godwit nests per farm. Result of the stepwise regression, presenting standardized regression coefficients (b) of the effects of the sub-area of the NFW and farming characteristics (farm management intensity and ‘eye for birds’) for 47 farmers as assessed by one of the regional experts and the density of Black-tailed Godwit nests in fields.
100 ha as insignificant and more than 75 nests per 100 ha as relevant. Local actors generally accepted these standards, although they thought they could be more finely nuanced, especially for Blacktailed Godwits. For this species they saw a density of 50–74 nests per hectare as showing promise: for if farmers with this density of nests could become more involved in protection, this might strengthen the return of birds to farmland and their long-term survival. Experts’ views on the role of farming as a determinant of the presence of Black-tailed Godwit nests are presented in Fig. 4. The 48 farms were distributed over 10 sub-areas within the NFW, with significant differences in the presence of Black-tailed Godwit nests, possibly related to the bio-physical environment (water table, fertility etc.) and landscape structure (hedges, urban areas, etc.). Secondly, the positive correlation between area and ‘‘eye’’ can be attributed to it being difficult to develop an ‘eye for birds’ in an area where there is an absence of bird nests. Thirdly, the regression model in Fig. 4 (calculated with data of 47 farms) shows that farming economically, combined with having an ‘eye for birds’, was an important factor in maintaining high numbers of bird nests. Economical farmers adopt less intensive farming practices and are more flexible in their use of the land than intensive farmers who require a far higher production from the fields and are therefore less flexible. The intensive farmers spread more manure and consequently mow the grassland earlier and more frequently in order to maximize output. 4. Conclusions The sustainable presence of meadow birds in intensively managed grasslands of dairy farms depends on many interacting biological processes and events (availability of feed resources, vegetation structure and height, predation, disturbances by management, ground water level, location of trees and bushes, urban areas and infrastructure, etc.), that act at different spatial scales (Benton et al., 2003; Durant et al., 2008), resulting in high complexity. Some of the processes can be influenced by adjusting the type, timing and intensity of farming activities, and a heterogeneous spatial distribution of these practices, supplemented with specific measures to protect meadow birds and their nests. In contrast to the relatively simplified (but controllable) measures proposed in most policies and agri-environmental schemes that are based on scientific knowledge, the experiences reported in this study show that farmers’ actions to accommodate birds are more context specific, heterogeneous and subtle. Regional experts consider that economical farming and fine-tuning of farming activities with an ‘eye for birds’ are crucial for bird protection. In their experience and opinion, ‘‘having an eye for birds’’ can
compensate for what might otherwise seem to be the detrimental effects of intensive farming styles. Farming economically leads to the best levels of protection for meadow birds. Building on this local knowledge, increased exchange between the farmers’ and scientific knowledge cultures might be a promising way to design more effective policies for conservation (Morris, 2006). Contrast exists in the complexity of bird management by farmers (e.g. Section 3.2) who generally tend to combine their complex experiential knowledge with scientific knowledge (Holloway, 1999), as opposed to the relatively simple prescriptions in policies indicated a large degree of incompatibility between prescribed practices based on scientific knowledge and the more flexible and sensitive practices of farmers (Wynne, 1996; Burgess et al., 2000; Riley, 2006 and, more specifically for this case: Swagemakers, 2008). Bird-oriented farming practices and special attention to and protection of nests and chicks are both promising avenues for supporting meadow bird populations and can partly mitigate against the negative influences of predation and intensive management. In order to (re-)integrate meadow bird protection in farming practices, the cooperation of a range of actors seems necessary. These actors include farmers, researchers, experts of the NFW regional cooperative, local birdwatchers, hunters, defenders of birds of prey, and representatives of nature conservation organizations. This study explored and monitored this large network of stakeholders involved in meadow bird management in the NFW. The analysis of views of the coordinating experts showed that the experts indeed successfully identified farmers with good practices and an ‘eye for birds’. Our interviews and monitoring of meetings showed ample indications (for a specification see Swagemakers, 2008) that the network in the NFW contains important prerequisites for effective cooperation for natural resource management, such as relations of trust, reciprocity and exchange, and connectedness in networks and groups (Pretty, 2003). The institutional arrangements and social capital in the NFW can play an important role in a learning process that could stimulate the further development and the spread of bird-friendly farming practices that can enhance the development and use of ecological capital. Acknowledgements We are indebted to the farmers and voluntary birdwatchers in the Frisian Woodlands who took an interest in our project, shared their data and concerns, and spent much time in explaining subtle aspects of these issues. We would particularly like to thank Jaap Dijkstra for his contributions to the research and Don Weenink for his suggestions during the research process and critical remarks on earlier versions of this paper. Our thanks also go to Adriaan Guldemond and Jort Verhulst for their useful comments on an earlier
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version of this paper, to Geert de Snoo, Dick Melman and Hans Schekkerman for their valuable comments on sociologists writing on aspects of bird ecology. We thank James Champion and Nicholas Parrott for corrections to the English in different phases of the process of writing. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on the earlier version of this paper. Finally we thank Willy Baak for his help during the last phase of writing. References Anonymous, 2005. Work Programme of the Northern Friesian Woodlands. Regional Cooperation Northern Friesian Woodlands, Drachten, the Netherlands (In Dutch). Baudry, J., Burel, F., Aviron, S., Martin, M., Ouin, A., Pain, G., Thenail, C., 2003. Temporal variability of connectivity in agricultural landscapes: Do farming activities help? Landsc. Ecol. 18, 303–314. Beintema, A.J., Moedt, O., Ellinger, D., 1995. Ecologische Atlas van de Nederlandse Weidevogels. Schuyt & Co., Haarlem. Beintema, A.J., Dunn, E., Stroud, D.A., 1997. Birds and wet grasslands. In: Pain, D.J., Pienkowski, M.W. (Eds.), Farming and Birds in Europe: The Common Agricultural Policy and its Implications for Bird Conservation. Academic Press, London, pp. 269–296. Benton, T.G., Vickery, J.A., Wilson, J.D., 2003. Farmland biodiversity: Is habitat heterogeneity the key? Trends Ecol Evol. 18, 182–188. Berendse, F., Chamberlain, D., Kleijn, D., Schekkerman, H., 2004. Declining biodiversity in agricultural landscapes and the effectiveness of agri-environmental schemes. J. Human Environ 33, 499–502. BirdLife International, 2004. Birds in Europe: Population Estimates, Trends and Conservation Status. BirdLife International, Cambridge. Burgess, J., Clark, J., Harrison, C.M., 2000. Knowledge in action: An actor network analysis of a wetland agri-environment scheme. Ecol. Econ. 35, 119–132. Devictor, V., Julliard, R., Couvet, D., Lee, A., Jiguet, F., 2007. Functional homogenization effect of urbanization on bird communities. Conserv. Biol. 21, 741–751. Dominguez Garcia, M.D., 2007. The Way You Do, It Matters: A Case Study: Farming Economically in Galician Dairy Agroecosystems in the Context of a Cooperative. PhD Thesis, Wageningen University, Wageningen. Duncan, P., Hewison, A.J.M., Houte, S., Rosoux, R., Tournebize, T., Dubs, F., Burel, F., Bretagnolle, V., 1999. Long-term changes in agricultural practices and Wildfowling in an internationally important wetland, and their effects on the guild of wintering ducks. J. Appl. Ecol. 36, 11–23. Durant, D., Tichit, M., Kerne´ı¨s, E., Fritz, H., 2008. Management of agricultural wet grasslands for breeding waders: integrating ecological and livestock system perspectives. Biodivers. Conserv 17, 2275–2295. Groen, N.M., Hemerik, L., 2002. Reproductive success and survival of Black-tailed Godwits Limosa limosa in a declining local population in the Netherlands. Ardea 60, 239–248. Guldemond, J.A., Parmentier, F., Visbeen, F., 1993. Meadow birds, field management and nest protection in a Dutch peat soil area. Wader Study Group Bull. 70, 42–48. Holloway, L., 1999. Understanding climate change and farming: scientific and farmers’ constructions of ‘global warming’ in relation to agriculture. Environ. Plan. A 31, 2017–2032. Kahlert, J., Clausen, P., Hounisen, J., Petersen, I., 2007. Response of breeding waders to agri-environmental schemes may be obscured by effects of existing hydrology and farming history. J. Ornithol. 148, 287–293. Kleijn, D., Berendse, F., Smit, R., Gilissen, N., 2001. Agri-environment schemes do not effectively protect biodiversity in Dutch agricultural landscapes. Nature 413, 723–725.
Marsden, T., 2003. The Condition of Rural Sustainability. Van Gorcum, Assen. Mathison, S., 1988. Why triangulate? Educ. Res. 17, 13–17. Morris, C., 2006. Negotiating the boundary between state-led and farmer approaches to knowing nature: An analysis of uk agri-environment schemes. Geoforum 37, 113–127. Pretty, J.N., 2003. Social capital and the collective management or resources. Science 302, 1912–1914. Renting, H., Van der Ploeg, J.D., 2001. Reconnecting nature, farming and society: environmental cooperatives in the Netherlands as institutional arrangements for creating coherence. J. Environ. Policy Plan 3, 85–101. Riley, M., 2006. Reconsidering conceptualisations of farm conservation activity: The case of conserving hay meadows. J. Rural Stud. 22, 337–353. Schekkerman, H., Beintema, A.J., 2007. Abundance of invertebrates and foraging success of Black-tailed Godwit Limosa limosa chicks in relation to agricultural grassland management. Ardea 95, 39–54. Schmitzberger, I., Wrbka, Th., Steurer, B., Aschenbrenner, G., Peterseil, J., Zechmeister, H.G., 2005. How farming styles influence biodiversity maintenance in Austrian agricultural landscapes. Agric. Ecosyst. Environ. 108, 274–290. Smeding, F.W., 2001. Steps Towards Food Web Management on Farms. PhD Thesis, Wageningen University, Wageningen. Smeding, F.W., De Snoo, G.R., 2003. A concept of food-web structure in organic arable farming systems. Landsc. Urban Plan 65, 219–236. Stobbelaar, D.J., Groot, J.C.J., Bishop, C., Hall, J., Pretty, J., 2009. Internalization of agrienvironmental policies and the role of institutions. J. Environ. Manage 90 (S2), S175–S184. Swagemakers, P., 2008. Ecologisch kapitaal: Over aanpassingsvermogen, flexibiliteit en oordeelkundigheid. PhD Thesis, Wageningen University, Wageningen. Swagemakers, P., Wiskerke, J.S.C., 2006. Integrating nature conservation and landscape management in farming systems in the Friesian Woodlands (NNetherlands). In: Tress, B., Tress, G., Fry, G., Opdam, P. (Eds.), From Landscape Research to Landscape Planning: Aspects of Integration, Education and Application. Springer, Dordrecht, pp. 321–334. Teunissen, W., Schekkerman, H., Willems, F., 2005. Predatie bij weidevogelsdop zoek naar de mogelijke effecten van predatie op de weidevogelstand. Sovon and Alterra, Wageningen, The Netherlands. Van der Ploeg, J.D., 1994. Styles of farming: An introductory note on concepts and methodology. In: Van der Ploeg, J.D., Long, A. (Eds.), Born from Within: Practices and Perspectives of Endogenous Rural Development. Van Gorcum, Assen, pp. 7–30. Van der Ploeg, J.D., 2000. Revitalizing agriculture: Farming economically as starting ground for rural development. Sociol. Rural 40, 240–260. Van der Ploeg, J.D., 2003. The Virtual Farmer. Van Gorcum, Assen. Van der Ploeg, J.D., 2006. Agricultural production in crisis. In: Cloke, P., Marsden, T., Mooney, P.H. (Eds.), Handbook of Rural Studies. Sage, London, pp. 258–277. Van der Ploeg, J.D., 2008. The New Peasantries: Struggles for Autonomy and Sustainability in an Era of Empire and Globalization. Earthscan, London. Verhulst, J., Kleijn, D., Berendse, F., 2007. Direct and indirect effects of the most widely implemented Dutch agri-environment schemes on breeding waders. J. Appl. Ecol. 44, 70–80. Verschuren, P., Doodewaard, H., 1999. Designing a Research Project. Lemma, Utrecht. Wiskerke, J.S.C., Bock, B.B., Stuiver, M., Renting, H., 2003. Environmental cooperatives as a new mode of rural governance. NJAS Wageningen J. Life Sci. 51, 9–25. Wymenga, E., Griffioen, R., Engelmoer, M., 2000. Het meten van resultaten van weidevogelpakketten in de subsidieregeling agrarisch natuurbeheer. A&Wrapport 26, Altenburg & Wymenga ecologisch onderzoek bv, Veenwouden. Wynne, B., 1996. May the sheep safely graze? A reflexive view of the expert-lay knowledge divide. In: Lash, S., Szerszynski, B., Wynne, B. (Eds.), Risk, Environment and Modernity. Towards a New Ecology. Sage, London, pp. 44–83. Yin, R.K., 1984. Case Study Research: Design and Methods. Sage, London.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Environmental Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jenvman
Linking birds, fields and farmers Paul Swagemakers*, Han Wiskerke, Jan Douwe Van Der Ploeg Rural Sociology Group, Wageningen University, P.O. Box 8130, NL-6700 EW Wageningen, the Netherlands
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Received 21 March 2007 Received in revised form 29 August 2008 Accepted 9 November 2008 Available online 27 December 2008
The dramatic decline in the presence of farmland birds during recent decades has provoked much attention in agri-environmental policy and ecological research. However, the still limited understanding of the socio-economical mechanisms that govern the decline in bird presence hampers the formulation of effective adjustments in land-use and farming practices that could support the return of birds to farmland, i.e. the required fine-tuning of management practices. As a consequence, the existing agrienvironmental schemes that offer financial compensation to farmers for implementing generally simple and rather crude measures to stimulate the presence of birds have been limited in their effectiveness and subject to much debate. The objective of this paper is to provide a sociological appraisal of farmers’ experiences with meadow bird protection in a mainly dairy farming area in the Netherlands. The methodology combined visual map analysis, surveys, interviews with farmers and experts, and monitoring farmers’ discussions. The results allowed an assessment of (i) farmers’ views on historical changes in bird numbers in the area and the current distribution of bird nests, (ii) locally adjusted, fine-tuned management practices that were considered to be promising for protecting bird nests, (iii) the importance of farm management with ‘an eye for birds’, i.e. farmers and/or birdwatchers paying additional attention to the presence of nests and chicks before carrying out farming activities, and (iv) the views of key experts in the socio-institutional network in the case study area. The paper concludes that there are various promising options for fine-tuning farm management so it offers better bird protection, but it is expected that such measures will predominantly be adopted on less intensively managed farms. Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Multifunctional agriculture Farm management Farming styles Local knowledge Black-tailed godwit Meadow birds
1. Introduction In Europe, the numbers and diversity of farmland birds have declined rapidly since the 1950s (Beintema et al., 1997; Duncan et al., 1999; BirdLife International, 2004). This trend is partly related to the reduction and fragmentation of habitat caused by urbanization and development of infrastructure (Devictor et al., 2007) and partly to the destruction or decline in the quality of potential bird habitats bought about by the intensification of agriculture (Baudry et al., 2003). At the same time the process of agricultural modernization over the last decades has led agriculture to a seeming state of crisis (Marsden, 2003; Van der Ploeg, 2003). One aspect of this crisis is that ‘‘the use of natural resources is subjected to an undeniable process of degradation’’ (Van der Ploeg, 2006). Although ecologists have paid considerable attention to the phenomenon of habitat and bird number reduction, a complete understanding of the exact mechanisms that govern these trends is still lacking. This is certainly due to the fact that such an * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ31 (0)31 748 5969; fax: þ31 (0)31 748 5475. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (P. Swagemakers), han.wiskerke@ wur.nl (H. Wiskerke), [email protected] (J.D. Van Der Ploeg). 0301-4797/$ – see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2008.11.020
understanding requires the difficult combination of both social and natural sciences. A wide range of interacting factors and processes (Benton et al., 2003) are to be brought together. This task is even more difficult since meadow bird management implies an additional range of contrasting points of view (of e.g. farmers, local experts and scientists). Meadow bird populations are limited by the insufficient opportunities that exist in intensively managed grasslands for undisturbed nesting, hatching and rearing chicks. Disturbances that result in the loss of chicks include predation and damage to and disturbance of nests by farming activities, which often lead to parent birds abandoning the nests (Teunissen et al., 2005). Factors that affect the quality of meadows as a habitat include the level of the ground water table and soil life. Falling water-tables combined with more efficient field drainage, often involving levelling the surface with a scraper so as to eliminate small drainage canals where water might gather, make it harder for the meadow birds to search for worms with their bills (Beintema et al., 1995). Equally when searching for worms, the meadow birds depend on soil life, and thus on a healthy soil that contains a high level of organic matter or humus and with an open structure. Worms help incorporate organic matter into the soil, transporting manure and so on
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from the surface deeper into the soil, where it is converted into nitrogen (Smeding, 2001; Smeding and De Snoo, 2003). In recent years various policies have put in place to encourage farmers to adjust their management to better meet the needs of meadow birds. Often, farmers receive financial payments for these activities to compensate them for their efforts and to offset any production losses. Despite such public investment, the results of these measures have been limited (e.g., Kleijn et al., 2001; Berendse et al., 2004; Kahlert et al., 2007) and they are much debated. The management prescriptions in these agri-environmental schemes have mainly focused on field scale adjustments in the timing of operations, such as manure application and mowing or grazing of grasslands. They include delaying the first fertilizer application and mowing so as to allow chick hatching and rearing to be completed. More recently, on-farm experiments with more complex patterns of field management have been conducted that create mosaics of fields containing a larger heterogeneity of biomass, vegetation height and development stage, and we review these below. However from a policy perspective it is more difficult to set targets for these more detailed in-field adjustments, which depend more on the voluntary initiatives of farmers. Meadow birds are almost completely dependent on agricultural fields for their nesting and feeding and, as a result, farmers are one of the main witnesses of the changes that have occurred in bird populations and nesting behaviour. Some farmers have a strong personal motivation to protect the environment (Stobbelaar et al., 2009) and the birds within it (Swagemakers and Wiskerke, 2006). These farmers have partly adjusted their activities to needs of birds whenever this is possible within their farm. These adjustments often differ from the prescriptions entailed in agri-environmental schemes. Moreover, most farmers are aware of the increasing societal demand for sustainable multifunctional agriculture that not only provides food and fibre, but also other ecosystem services that develop and make use of ecological capital (Swagemakers, 2008). This awareness has been further stimulated by new institutional arrangements, such as the environmental cooperatives that have emerged since the 1990s (Wiskerke et al., 2003). These environmental cooperatives aim to support farmers in changing their management so as to improve environmental quality. These individual and collective initiatives can be assumed to have created a reservoir of good practices and insights that might be beneficial for meadow birds’ nesting and population development. This paper investigates this reservoir of knowledge. It is based on an exploratory case study carried out in the Dutch Northern Frisian Woodlands. Its objectives were to document the experiences of farmers in this area with meadow bird oriented management, to identify the complexities involved and to explore how farmers’ attitudes and practices can overcome other ecological and agronomical constraints. Section 2 of this paper outlines the characteristics of the case study area and the methodologies used. In Section 3 we describe and discuss farmers’ views about the presence of farm birds, the promising practices and the relevance of paying special attention to protecting birds and their nests. In Section 4 it is concluded that birdoriented farming practices involve building on ecological capital and any strategy for increasing the numbers and diversity of farmland birds needs to involve a wide range of actors. This applies especially since local knowledge, especially when articulated through study groups, represents remarkable contrasts vis-a`-vis scientific knowledge.
region is characterized by a small-scale landscape on predominantly sandy soils with dairy farming as the prevailing land-use. On some farms a limited proportion (of up to 5%) of the area is used for forage maize production, while the rest of the area is covered by permanent grassland, rotationally grazed and mown. The fields, with an average size of 2 ha, are often surrounded by hedgerows and frequently bordered by ponds. The average grazing season lasts for 6 months, from May to October. Grazing regimes vary from day and night grazing to restricted grazing (for instance only during part of the day) and zero grazing. The bio-physical farm and field characteristics and regulations for maintaining the landscape and land-use patterns have substantially restricted any opportunities for a widespread conversion to large-scale agriculture. As a result the region offers many opportunities to provide non-productive agricultural amenities. In the 1990s, the farmers were faced with strict regulations to reduce emissions of ammonia and nitrate. Environmental cooperatives emerged in the NFW as a response to policy interventions that set out the methods to be used rather than the targets to be reached. The cooperatives developed activities that could reach the targets of the policies with context-specific measures that were far more acceptable to farmers. In addition the farmers committed themselves to maintaining the historical landscape, which provides a strong sense of local identity for its inhabitants, and the cooperatives organized activities related to nature and landscape management by farmers (Renting and Van der Ploeg, 2001; Wiskerke et al., 2003; Anonymous, 2005). More recently, several environmental cooperatives in this area have merged to create a regional environmental, i.e. territorial cooperative ‘Noardelike Fryske Waˆlden’, which has established contracts with the Dutch government which rewards participating farmers for meeting environmental objectives (Anonymous, 2005). Initially, these objectives focused on reducing nutrient losses at the regional scale, but gradually more attention was paid to developing ecosystem services related to biodiversity and landscape, thereby converting ecological capital into societal interests at higher levels of aggregation (Van der Ploeg, 2008). In the early 1990s some research on farming styles was conducted in the region. Farming styles refer to differences in farmers’ notions, practices and embeddedness in institutional contexts, and for that embody specific devices for (re-)moulding the production process (Van der Ploeg, 1994, 2000, 2003). Farming styles differ in time and place, are locally specific and change through time. This approach was more recently applied to biodiversity maintenance in Austrian agricultural landscapes, which showed the negative effect of high land-use intensity on biodiversity (Schmitzberger et al., 2005). Although this study recorded the presence of both intensive and extensive styles, it did not show how farmers can compensate and correct for detrimental effects of intensive farming styles. However, Black-tailed Godwit chicks require substantial improvements in their feeding and survival conditions and such measures may not be enough unless they are quite specifically focused (Schekkerman and Beintema, 2007). By contrast, economical farmers depend less on external resources that have to be mobilized through the market. They reach higher levels of technical efficiency, and their practices are ecologically more sustainable (Van der Ploeg, 2000; Dominguez Garcia, 2007). Thus, it might be hypothesized that farming economically is a promising style of farming for the return of birds to farmland in the case study area.
2. Methods and materials 2.2. Research approach 2.1. Case study area The case study focuses on an intensively managed agricultural landscape in the Dutch Northern Friesian Woodlands (NFW). This
A case study approach seeks to provide an in-depth analysis of a specific phenomenon (Yin, 1984). Usually it employs a variety and combination of research methods which are generally combined
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(and validated) through a process of triangulation (Mathison, 1988; Verschuren and Doodewaard, 1999). The different sources of information used in this study include grey literature, on-farm observations and maps, together with interviews with relevant actors and the monitoring of organized discussion sessions of actors. The actors included in this study were: researchers (ecologists), local informants (birdwatchers, hunters), regional experts (representatives of the environmental cooperative), farmers (individual farmers as well as those involved in study groups), and politicians (at the national and regional level). The maps of distribution of bird nests were drawn by local birdwatchers to monitor the presence of four key species of meadow bird species in the area: Lapwing (Vanellus vanellus), Black-tailed Godwit (Limosa limosa), Redshank (Tringa totanus) and Oystercatcher (Haematopus ostralegus). The maps were assessed visually and discussed with birdwatchers, farmers and other stakeholders. In the NFW a total of 224 farmers were participating in agrienvironmental schemes in 2006 (with complete data of use for the case study). From this group, 48 farmers were invited by the expert coordinators of the environmental cooperatives to participate in study group meetings. The coordinators selected the group primarily on the basis of their knowledge about the farmers’ management strategies and prior knowledge of the number of nests on these farmers’ fields. All the participants had a strong idea (albeit sometimes informal) about the distribution in the area. All but one of the farmers agreed to participate in the project and the group of 47 farmers was divided, by locality, into 10 groups, each representing a sub-area of the NFW. Using a set of five Likert scales (which had been previously tested), the coordinators assessed the intensity and scale of farm management and the care taken for bird management (‘eye for birds’) of each of the farmers, based on their experience and knowledge of the farming systems. In order to determine the relations between farmers’ characteristics and the density of Black-tailed Godwit nests a stepwise multiple regression analysis was done that took Black-tailed Godwit nest density as a dependent variable (SPSS statistical software package). Variables used in the model included the locality in the NFW (S), the inverse of management intensity (M, scaled 1 ¼ high to 5 ¼ low) and a score for the farmer’s ‘eye for birds’ (E, scaled 1 ¼ low to 5 ¼ high). A p value of <0.05 was considered significant. The analyses focused on the number of nests found, i.e. used as indicator for the presumed presence of breeding pairs. However, there is a slightly different relationship between nests and breeding pairs for the different bird species (Wymenga et al., 2000). In general, for the Lapwing one generally calculates that there are more nests than breeding pairs, with the inverse being true for the Redshank (as not all nests are found) and the Oystercatcher (not all chicks hatch out of the eggs). For the Black-tailed Godwit the numbers of nests and breeding pairs are calculated as being equal. Although the calculation of breeding pairs would give a more accurate picture of the situation than the calculation of nests, there were several practical reasons for basing the analyses on the calculation of the number of nests: the presence of birds is related to nests, knowledge about the location of the nests of meadow birds is important for bird protection, and maps of bird nests were locally available. In addition, local birdwatchers undertook a detailed analysis of the distribution of bird nests within part of the NFW (53110 N, 5 550 E and 3100 ha). This area is largely open, with a relatively low density of avenues of trees and hedges. Only the eastern part of the area has a high density of tree cover, with hedges surrounding most of the fields. First the nests were mapped at farm level and then the individual maps were consolidated, providing a larger picture of the factors constraining the survival of chicks in the area. As such, the map represents a combination of the local knowledge of
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farmers and birdwatchers and provides information for understanding the distribution and reproduction of farmland birds. 3. Results and discussion 3.1. Spatial distribution of nests Maps of the distribution of nests in the case study area in 2006 showed an uneven spatial distribution of meadow birds. Some clusters of fields contained a relatively high density of bird nests (10–18 nests/ha), whilst others were nearly or completely devoid of nests. Regional stakeholders were not only very aware of the decline in bird numbers (Box 1, Quote 1.1) but were also aware of changes in the spatial patterns of nest distribution. According to older birdwatchers and egg collectors the spatial distribution has changed considerably over the past 30–40 years, when the different species were far more equally distributed over the area. Another difference mentioned by the experts was that previously the different bird species rarely nested in the same locality, each species had its own ‘pockets’, whereas today different species nest in the same fields (Fig. 1). One consequence of these spatial changes is that the distance between nests has decreased considerably. Lapwing nests were well distributed over the area (Fig. 2a) whereas there was an evident concentration of Black-tailed Godwit nests within confined parts of the case study area (Fig. 2b). Other clusters map contained mainly Lapwings and Oystercatchers. Redshanks nested together with other birds, sometimes in the fields, along the ditches, but mainly in the edges of the fields, close to the canals. According to local experts Lapwings also tend to nest in maize, which was observed in some fields in the case study area. Oystercatcher nests were also observed in the area with more maize fields. Black-tailed Godwits and Redshanks avoid nesting in maize unless a green manure crop (e.g. grass) is sown, but then the nests are left anyway when land is ploughed and prepared for seeding. Since Lapwings are aggressively protective against predators this means that Black-tailed Godwits do not benefit from this behaviour. Meadow birds generally return each year to the same specific area for nesting (Groen and Hemerik, 2002). This pattern carries on through different generations and stakeholders are aware of this process of site fidelity (Box 1, Quote 1.2). Avoidance of certain fields and clustering can result from disturbances such as intensive management practices, a lack of feed and the occurrence of predation (by both birds of prey such as Buzzards, Kestrels, and Grey Herons and animals of prey, such as Stoats, Weasels, and Foxes). The places where birdwatchers had found signs of predation in recent years were identified and marked on the map. These
Box 1. Quotes related to spatial distribution of nests Quote 1.1 (Leader of birdwatchers association) ‘‘It is a national trend that meadow birds are declining, in particular the Black-tailed Godwit. The population mature and less eggs are produced and less chicks are hatched. What can we do? When was the population large? That was in the 1950s. How did those farmers manage? Their practices coincided with the occurrence of many meadow birds.’’ Quote 1.2 (Farmer) ‘‘I had quite dark and quite light birds and those birds are back again. A neighbour mows in a crazy way, very early. But once finished, a habitat is destroyed and you won’t have it back easily.’’
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Fig. 1. Map of fields with different numbers of bird species nesting (white: no nests; green: nests of only one bird species; red: 2, 3 or 4 of the focus species nesting). (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
were often located close to elements of woody landscape such as hedges, bushes and trees, which can provide habitat for the predators (Teunissen et al., 2005). Fields in the vicinity of these woody landscape elements where the probability of predation is higher were found to generally have a lower density of bird nests, with birds preferring more open areas for nesting (Teunissen et al., 2005). One farmer had surroundings that signs of predation and fields that contained various bird nests. This raised the possibility that the continued existence of birds close to sites of past predation could be related to careful farming practices that provided protection against predation (see Section 3.2). 3.2. Bird-oriented farming practices A local farmer whose land was located near several predation points managed his fields so as to provide continuous and abundant protection for birds and especially for chicks. The survival of chicks is an important factor in reversing the decline of meadow bird species, particularly of the Black-tailed Godwit, as the chicks cannot fly in the first ten days after their birth. This protection was accomplished through a complex pattern of fertilization and harvesting, which followed a mosaic pattern, both between and within fields, thereby creating differences in grass height. Different (parts of the) fields were used for cattle grazing (both sheep and cows) and mowing was spread over a longer period. In this way, the grass was as different growth phases, thanks to the spreading of activities in the fields over time. In addition, this farmer mowed the edges of the fields just once a year, very early in the growing season, and reduced subsequent grass growth in these parts of his fields by not fertilizing these parts of the fields. One of his fields attracted nesting Black-tailed Godwits and this field remained untouched throughout the nesting period. High grass heights around the edges of the fields and in other parts of the fields could potentially protect against predators, but, according to the farmer, the chicks of Blacktailed Godwit were still vulnerable to birds of prey, even within the fields with higher grass heights. Thus for this bird species, clustering of species is likely to remain crucial as the Godwit’s chicks can be protected by the more aggressive Lapwing. In the opinion of this farmer, the simple application of ‘‘delayed mowing dates’’ as
proposed in many agri-environmental schemes for meadow bird protection was of no use. Farmers who mowed their grass themselves, rather than hire a contractor, found it far easier to create heterogeneity through mosaic patterns of harvesting (Box 2, Quote 2.1). Over the season, farmers have to cut grass from the fields at various times, and intensive farmers often hire contractors to get the work done rapidly. Mowing at high speed with big machinery (Box 2, Quote 2.2) caused what is locally referred to as ‘bloodbaths’. Even if a chick was spotted, getting off the tractor in order to catch and safeguard it would simply be too time-consuming. Instead, mowing at a slower speed and with smaller machinery (Box 2, Quote 2.3) combined with the habit of leaving the field for some hours if chicks were spotted (and start mowing elsewhere) helped the survival of chicks. Most farmers concerned with the protection of meadow birds in their fields owned farms that were characterized by extensive practices. According to these farmers it is easier to create good habitat conditions for meadow birds on such farms than on intensive farms (Box 2, Quote 2.4). They recognized that this is particularly relevant for protecting the chicks of the Black-tailed Godwit, which require longer grass to shelter in the field margins or on parcels mowed later in the season. Thus, a considerable menace at one level (a high presence of predators in a particular sub area) might be mediated (or compensated) by particular activities at other levels (farms and fields). This principle also applies if we consider the interaction between changes in farming and the presence (or absence) of meadow birds. 3.3. An ‘eye for birds’ Both farmers and birdwatchers expressed the view that having an ‘eye for birds’ was crucial, and became more critical if the farmer applied large-scale and intensive practices. Having an ‘eye for birds’ was relevant both when planning farm management activities and when carrying them out. Prior to carrying out farming operations with a potential for creating disturbance such as applying fertilizer or mowing, farmers, birdwatchers and other volunteers inspect fields in search of nests and mark these before starting the activity.
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a
b
Fig. 2. Presence of nests of (a) Lapwings and (b) Black-tailed Godwits per field. White: no nests, red: gradient of increasing number per field with maxima of 19 and 9 per field for Lapwing and Black-tailed Godwit. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
Cages are placed around nests before grazing commences so as to provide protection against trampling and other disturbance from farm animals. These practices have been proven to be effective in increasing the hatching success on mown fields (Guldemond et al., 1993). Another key aspect in having an eye for meadow birds, recognized by the local experts and interviewed farmers, was the ability to see the birds when out on the tractor mowing the fields. Nests might be marked within the fields, but the chicks still run around. And since the chicks like to hide in the long grass, one needed to have an ‘eye for birds’ and adjust one’s practices accordingly, either delaying mowing or carefully chasing off or catching the chicks before mowing. Management practices of farmers that have an ‘eye for birds’ might compensate for and correct what might otherwise seem to be detrimental practices. Farmers can either have an ‘eye for birds’
themselves (, Quotes 2.2, 2.3 and 3.1) and be aware of the needs and behaviour of different bird species (Box 3, Quotes 3.2 and 3.3), or allow the support of local birdwatchers in doing this work for them. Farmers expected that future changes in farm configuration are likely to reduce the attention for bird-oriented farming practices and the ‘eye for birds’, especially if delayed mowing regimes are presented as only option for safeguarding bird life in farmers’ fields. One of the farmers (Box 3, Quote 3.4) argued that agri-environmental schemes should provide more flexibility in applying context-specific bird-oriented farming practices that focus on the objective of bird protection rather than on the means of achieving it through prescribed practices. Farmers feared the further implementation of policy frameworks that drove farmers towards later mowing dates and/or one-sided financial support for extensive land use. Neither payment for agri-environmental schemes nor
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Box 2. Quotes related to bird-oriented management practices
Box 3. Quotes related to ‘eye for birds’ Quote 3.1 (Farmer) ‘‘I mow my own fields. Then one has more control over what happens in the fields. I am concerned with and engaged in meadow birds. The contractor, once he and his machinery are at the farmyard, has to get the work done.’’
Quote 2.1 (Farmer) ‘‘Now I try, by leaving strips of grass to grow longer, to create a solution for the birds. Mowing a part of the field later makes me have to go back there and that is what you get paid for in the scheme. I use a self-loading wagon. It costs me but I think it’s worth it.’’
Quote 3.2 (Farmer) ‘‘Between 10 and 15 of May the chicks just left the eggs, especially the Black-tailed Godwit chicks, and, being a week old at the moment of mowing, the chicks should find protection in the grass. For the Lapwing chicks things are different; those chicks move away to short grass, so they will manage anyhow. But one should not mow grass all at once, or too early in spring.’’
Quote 2.2 (Farmer) ‘‘The way in which mowing is organized is dangerous for birds. Some farmers mow with a cyclo-mower at one side of the tractor, others mow with both mowers in the front and on the side of the tractor, thus easily mowing 5 metres at once. You need to have an eye for where you mow. The contractor arrives with big machinery and even works during the night. From an economic perspective this is good: the best feed value is created and thus the most money can be earned. But it is of no use for birds. Having mowed, those farmers immediately start to shake the grass; then, the whole work in the field is against the birds.’’
Quote 3.3 (Farmer) ‘‘On my farm, many things work well by themselves. The sheep go outside early in spring. All the other grass on the farm grows, but not in the fields with the sheep. Then, the sheep move on to the next field. As long as there are sheep in the field, there are no eggs. As peace returns to the fields, the eggs are there.’’
Quote 2.3 (Farmer) ‘‘Over the last 20 years I have learned a lot about birds. If you enter a field with the tractor, you can see many things. you can observe where birds fly away and can conclude where the nests are probably located. If you do not drive too fast the birds can get away. Generally I drive at a speed of 5 km/h, whereas the contractor comes with larger machines and drives at 15 km/h.’’
Quote 3.4 (Farmer) ‘‘As the future is designed for farmers at present, everything has to be bigger and people face increasingly a shortage of time. Consequently, people no longer have an eye for the life in the fields. Some farmers push aside the life in the fields as they are afraid of rules. I do not participate if strict rules are implemented. But I am in favour of management conditions that can be flexibly adjusted by farmers. A budget should be created that allows farmers to do something that helps meadow birds to survive. Mind you, this standpoint is not supported by all farmers; I myself have an extensive farm and I can implement measures easier than an intensive farmer who is heavily in debt to the bank. I adapt my mowing scheme to the presence of birds in the fields as I have always been doing.’’
Quote 2.4 (Farmer) ‘‘There has always been a pocket with many breeding birds here in the area with farmers farming even more extensively than me. Before June, they were never on their fields, even though they had some sheep. The land was not drained, the fields had many molehills, and no artificial fertilizers were used. The land turned red and yellow due to Broad-leaved Dock and Buttercups.’’
payment per clutch (Verhulst et al., 2007) helps farmers combining agricultural production with meadow bird management. Neither instrument adequately supports farmers who care about farmland birds. The key might lie in developing farmers’ eye for birds. The following section discusses ways in which this might be developed and used to help sustain bird protection.
a significant relationship between the density of nests and the (non) selection for participation in study groups (c2 ¼ 45.42, df ¼ 3, p < 0.01). The density of nests was used to categorize farms (Fig. 3) according to policy guidelines that indicate less than 25 nests per
45,00
3.4. The views of regional experts
Not selected farmers (n=176)
Selected farmers (n=47)
40,00 35,00
% of farmers
We interviewed a wide network of stakeholders involved in bird conservation. One of the most important actors in the network appeared to be the regional experts who were coordinating activities such as organizing study group meeting for the environmental cooperatives. These experts were responsible for selecting the group of 48 farmers which included those with the most promising practices. These farmers were selected without prior knowledge of the exact densities of birds on the farms and all but one of them participated in meetings to share their knowledge about birdfriendly management practices. The frequency distributions in Fig. 3 show (calculated with data of 47 farms) that the density of nests was higher in the fields of the participating farmers than in those of other farmers involved in agri-environmental schemes, indicating that the experts were well-informed about the key farmers and areas for bird presence in the NFW. There was
30,00 25,00 20,00 15,00 10,00 5,00 0,00
0-24
25-49
50-74
≥75
Numbers of nests per 100 ha (for ≥75 ha on the condition that Black-tailed Godwit nests per farm ≥5) Fig. 3. Frequency distribution of farms with different densities of nests in their fields.
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Sub-area + 0.31
NS + 0.39
Farm mgt NS Eye for birds
Stepwise R2=0,42
+ 0.82 Interaction
+ 0.48
Black-tailed Godwit nests
+ 0.67
Fig. 4. Path diagram explaining the weighted quantity of Black-tailed Godwit nests per farm. Result of the stepwise regression, presenting standardized regression coefficients (b) of the effects of the sub-area of the NFW and farming characteristics (farm management intensity and ‘eye for birds’) for 47 farmers as assessed by one of the regional experts and the density of Black-tailed Godwit nests in fields.
100 ha as insignificant and more than 75 nests per 100 ha as relevant. Local actors generally accepted these standards, although they thought they could be more finely nuanced, especially for Blacktailed Godwits. For this species they saw a density of 50–74 nests per hectare as showing promise: for if farmers with this density of nests could become more involved in protection, this might strengthen the return of birds to farmland and their long-term survival. Experts’ views on the role of farming as a determinant of the presence of Black-tailed Godwit nests are presented in Fig. 4. The 48 farms were distributed over 10 sub-areas within the NFW, with significant differences in the presence of Black-tailed Godwit nests, possibly related to the bio-physical environment (water table, fertility etc.) and landscape structure (hedges, urban areas, etc.). Secondly, the positive correlation between area and ‘‘eye’’ can be attributed to it being difficult to develop an ‘eye for birds’ in an area where there is an absence of bird nests. Thirdly, the regression model in Fig. 4 (calculated with data of 47 farms) shows that farming economically, combined with having an ‘eye for birds’, was an important factor in maintaining high numbers of bird nests. Economical farmers adopt less intensive farming practices and are more flexible in their use of the land than intensive farmers who require a far higher production from the fields and are therefore less flexible. The intensive farmers spread more manure and consequently mow the grassland earlier and more frequently in order to maximize output. 4. Conclusions The sustainable presence of meadow birds in intensively managed grasslands of dairy farms depends on many interacting biological processes and events (availability of feed resources, vegetation structure and height, predation, disturbances by management, ground water level, location of trees and bushes, urban areas and infrastructure, etc.), that act at different spatial scales (Benton et al., 2003; Durant et al., 2008), resulting in high complexity. Some of the processes can be influenced by adjusting the type, timing and intensity of farming activities, and a heterogeneous spatial distribution of these practices, supplemented with specific measures to protect meadow birds and their nests. In contrast to the relatively simplified (but controllable) measures proposed in most policies and agri-environmental schemes that are based on scientific knowledge, the experiences reported in this study show that farmers’ actions to accommodate birds are more context specific, heterogeneous and subtle. Regional experts consider that economical farming and fine-tuning of farming activities with an ‘eye for birds’ are crucial for bird protection. In their experience and opinion, ‘‘having an eye for birds’’ can
compensate for what might otherwise seem to be the detrimental effects of intensive farming styles. Farming economically leads to the best levels of protection for meadow birds. Building on this local knowledge, increased exchange between the farmers’ and scientific knowledge cultures might be a promising way to design more effective policies for conservation (Morris, 2006). Contrast exists in the complexity of bird management by farmers (e.g. Section 3.2) who generally tend to combine their complex experiential knowledge with scientific knowledge (Holloway, 1999), as opposed to the relatively simple prescriptions in policies indicated a large degree of incompatibility between prescribed practices based on scientific knowledge and the more flexible and sensitive practices of farmers (Wynne, 1996; Burgess et al., 2000; Riley, 2006 and, more specifically for this case: Swagemakers, 2008). Bird-oriented farming practices and special attention to and protection of nests and chicks are both promising avenues for supporting meadow bird populations and can partly mitigate against the negative influences of predation and intensive management. In order to (re-)integrate meadow bird protection in farming practices, the cooperation of a range of actors seems necessary. These actors include farmers, researchers, experts of the NFW regional cooperative, local birdwatchers, hunters, defenders of birds of prey, and representatives of nature conservation organizations. This study explored and monitored this large network of stakeholders involved in meadow bird management in the NFW. The analysis of views of the coordinating experts showed that the experts indeed successfully identified farmers with good practices and an ‘eye for birds’. Our interviews and monitoring of meetings showed ample indications (for a specification see Swagemakers, 2008) that the network in the NFW contains important prerequisites for effective cooperation for natural resource management, such as relations of trust, reciprocity and exchange, and connectedness in networks and groups (Pretty, 2003). The institutional arrangements and social capital in the NFW can play an important role in a learning process that could stimulate the further development and the spread of bird-friendly farming practices that can enhance the development and use of ecological capital. Acknowledgements We are indebted to the farmers and voluntary birdwatchers in the Frisian Woodlands who took an interest in our project, shared their data and concerns, and spent much time in explaining subtle aspects of these issues. We would particularly like to thank Jaap Dijkstra for his contributions to the research and Don Weenink for his suggestions during the research process and critical remarks on earlier versions of this paper. Our thanks also go to Adriaan Guldemond and Jort Verhulst for their useful comments on an earlier
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