Rapid recovery of a depleted population of Little Bustards Tetrax tetrax following provision of alfalfa through an agri‐environment scheme

Abstract

The Little Bustard has undergone a steep reduction of its Western Palaearctic range over the last century. In the west of France, breeding populations declined by 96% from 1978 to 2008 in cultivated areas where grasslands have been converted into intensively managed annual crops. Little Bustard abundance and nest productivity have been monitored since 1995 in a 450-km 2 site in western France. We assessed the proximate causes of the decline of Little Bustards in French farming landscapes and quantified the effectiveness of conservation measures that aimed to reverse the decline. The decline of Little Bustard, from about 65 males in 1995 to just six males in 2003, could be related to a near absence of recruitment over this period. Since 2004, the establishment of more than 1300 ha of specifically targeted agri-environment schemes (AES) in the study site has led to a sharp increase in female productivity, mainly associated with nesting in AES fields. By imposing constraints on mowing dates, AES have prevented nest destruction and female mortality during mowing and, by increasing plant species diversity, provided chicks with a higher abundance of grasshoppers. This has contributed to reversing the trend, and increasing the population to around 30 males in 2009. Conservation strategies involving specifically targeted AES based on the identification of limiting factors can help to reverse the decline of threatened species.

Weeds for bees? A review

“…Evidence has shown that this has resulted in a major loss of biodiversity in farmland landscapes, with a decline in all taxa (Donald et al 2001), affecting ecosystem functioning and the provision of services (Cardinale et al 2012). This decline has affected not only threatened species and species dependent on conservation measures (Donald et al 2001;Bretagnolle et al 2011) but also ordinary biodiversity (Green et al 2005) and has more recently been shown to have affected functional biodiversity Biesmeijer et al 2006). In particular, the pollination service provided by several insect families is currently threatened because these insects are disappearing from agricultural landscapes (Potts et al 2010a, b).…”

Recursive movement patterns: review and synthesis across species

“…Prey's complacency behavior is one such resource, as described above. Potential mates' sexual receptivity is another such resource and if it has a spatial component it may also promote recursive movement patterns (e.g., the lek system of the Little Bustard, Tetrax tetrax, in which the females show fidelity to lek sites while the males v www.esajournals.org continuously move between them; Alonso et al 2000, Bretagnolle et al 2011. Parasitic load can also lead to recursive movements.…”

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