The importance of traditional agricultural landscapes for preventing species extinctions

Abstract

The main paradigm for protection of biodiversity, focusing on maintaining or restoring conditions where humans leave no or little impact, risks overlooking anthropogenic landscapes harboring a rich native biodiversity. An example is northern European agricultural landscapes with traditionally managed semi-natural grasslands harboring an exceptional local richness of many taxa, such as plants, fungi and insects. During the last century these grasslands have declined by more than 95%, i.e. in the same magnitude as other, internationally more recognized declines of natural habitats. In this study, data from the Swedish Red List was used to calculate tentative extinction rates for vascular plants, insects (Lepidoptera, Coleoptera, Hymenoptera) and fungi, given a scenario where such landscapes would vanish. Conservative estimates suggest that abandonment of traditional management in these landscapes would result in elevated extinction rates in all these taxa, between two and three orders of magnitude higher than global background extinction rates. It is suggested that the species richness in these landscapes reflects a species pool from Pleistocene herbivore-structured environments, which, after the extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna, was rescued by the introduction of pre-historic agriculture. Maintaining traditionally managed agricultural landscapes is of paramount importance to prevent species loss. There is no inherent conflict between preservation of anthropogenic landscapes and remaining ‘wild’ areas, but valuating also anthropogenic landscapes is essential for biodiversity conservation.

Avian Use of Dairy Farm Ponds and Landowners’ Perceptions of Their Management for Wildlife Conservation

“…At the landscape level, maintaining traditional dairy farm landscapes in Southern Quebec is an important objective in order to prevent regional avian biodiversity declines as suggested elsewhere [16,43]. Creating a pond network, restoring environmental conditions around open-canopy ponds, and widening riparian strips and the adjacent uncultivated field margins would have a beneficial effect on the regional populations of several farmland bird species without significantly impacting agricultural practices and crop yields [5].…”

Causes and Reasons of Insect Decline and the Way Forward

“…However, the insect diversity and abundance has resumed rhythm after first extinction giving birth to new species at higher rates, however still it will take millions of years to restore the extinct ones [6]. The latest human caused [1] Holocene extinction of species is growing since DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.98786 20th century, and much of the extinction reports were not from arthropods, with 95% decline in anthropogenic habitats like grasslands [27]. In the case of vertebrates, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) published a research-based opinion in 2012 that insect species are decreasing globally, with direct and indirect effects on pollination, ecosystem balance, ecosystem services, livestock, and overall food production, and may decline in the near future [28].…”

Land Use and Ecological Change: A 12,000-Year History

“…In other regions, the low-intensity land use regimes of hunter-gatherers, early farmers, and pastoralists shaped dynamic and productive mosaics of intensively used patches interspersed with habitats sustaining biodiverse novel communities in varying states of ecological succession in response to burning, tillage, middens, transplanting, and other cultural practices (17,20,27,30,66,129,131,132). Areas now governed in similar ways by Indigenous and traditional peoples are some of the most biodiverse areas remaining on the planet (133)(134)(135), and landscapes under traditional low-intensity use are generally much more biodiverse than those governed by high-intensity agricultural and industrial land use regimes (131,(134)(135)(136)(137)(138). Although some societies practicing low-intensity land use contributed to extinctions in the past, including island endemics (139) and megafauna (57,59), with cascading ecological consequences (57,58), land use can also produce sustained ecological benefits through practices that expand habitats for other species (30,140), enhance species diversity (27,30,86,(141)(142)(143), increase hunting sustainability (65), disperse seeds (144), and enhance soil fertility (145,146).…”

“…Given that biodiversity was sustained for millennia around the world in cultural landscapes shaped by low-intensity land use regimes that left ample refugia for native species, land use itself cannot be the main cause of the current biodiversity crisis (5,27,138). In contrast, the homogeneous and ecologically simplified landscapes produced by large-scale mechanization, industrial infrastructure, and chemical pest control tend to leave no space for native species to live within or even to cross the landscape (5,18,19,93,101,102).…”

“…Untouched wildlands were almost as rare 12,000 years ago as they are today, and wildland conversions remain as rare as they have always been. Instead, the most plausible explanation for current losses of biodiversity is the replacement of Indigenous and traditional low-intensity land use practices that sustained biodiversity for millennia with ecologically simplified and homogenous large-scale industrial landscapes (5,34,96,138).…”