A new study has called for a more focused approach to wildlife-friendly farming schemes with a view to recovering farmland bird populations.

The RSPB research demonstrated that by targeting higher-tier and more onerous agri-environment schemes to farmland that already holds the highest numbers of priority birds, means less land needs to be managed in this way. This would make it a more efficient use of government cash and free upland for food production.

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The new paper, published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, with support from the British Trust for Ornithology and funding from Natural England, monitored how farmland bird populations responded to different levels of agri-environment schemes in arable, pastoral and mixed farming landscapes.

The UK government had recently introduced a legally binding target to halt species abundance declines in England by 2030, with similar time-bound EU targets currently under discussion. The 10-year study measured changes in the abundance of farmland birds on land managed under lower and higher-tier agri-environment schemes, as well as land with no bird-friendly farming initiatives.

Under the higher-tier scheme, an average of 11% of the farm was devoted to bird-friendly measures, whereas less than 4% was managed under the lower-tier schemes.

The authors specifically studied bird-friendly measures that provided seed-rich habitat for winter foraging, insect-rich habitat for feeding chicks, and nesting habitat for ground nesting species, such as lapwing. Higher-tier farms also received bespoke one-to-one management advice prior to the start of their agreements.

The results showed that when approximately 10% of a farm was devoted to bird-friendly farming practices under the higher-tier scheme, it benefitted more than half of the species in two of the three study regions. Although lower-tier provision generally failed to increase bird numbers, it helped to sustain populations of some species, which continued to decline in the absence of agri-environment support elsewhere.

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A second part of the study asked what proportion of the farmed landscape would need to be placed into higher-tier agreements to recover farmland birds by 10% over 10 years. The answer was similar in the two regions – 26% in the pastoral West Midlands and 31% in arable East Anglia.

However, by targeting higher-tier agreements to farms that already held higher numbers of priority farmland birds, this requirement dropped to 17% and 21%, respectively, which represented a significant cost saving. This is the first study to shed light on the amount of nature friendly farming that might be required to recover farmland birds on a landscape scale.

The study cautioned that some species with specialist requirements, like the turtle dove, would need specific tailored habitat management that was carefully targeted to the sites where the species was still hanging on. The generic bird-friendly measures tested in this study had no discernible benefits for this species.