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Without ecology we are failing to reap the rewards of agri-environment schemes

December 04, 2003

Ecological evaluations must become an integral part of European agri-environment schemes if the billions of Euros spent on them are to result in real ecological benefits, leading ecologists have warned. A comprehensive review of the biodiversity benefits of agri-environment schemes, published in the latest issue of the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology, suggests that policy makers are not properly evaluating their effectiveness despite the fact that 24.3 billion Euros have been spent on such schemes in the European Union since 1994.

The authors of the review, Professor Bill Sutherland of the University of East Anglia and Dr David Kleijn of Wageningen University in The Netherlands said: "We carried out a comprehensive review search for studies that test the effectiveness of agri-environment schemes in published papers or reports. In the majority of studies, the research design was inadequate to assess reliably the effectiveness of the schemes. Thirty-one percent did not contain a statistical analysis, and where an experimental approach was used, designs were usually weak and biased towards giving a favourable result."

The findings should serve as a wake up call to UK and European policy makers that, in order to have a cost-effective beneficial effect on biodiversity, ecologists must be much more closely involved in appraising which schemes are most effective. According to Sutherland and Kleijn: "We suggest that in the future, ecological evaluations must become an integral part of any agri-environment scheme, including the collection of baseline data, the random placement of scheme and control sites in areas with similar initial conditions, and sufficient replication."

"We are unable to say how effective agri-environment schemes are in protecting and promoting biodiversity on farmland. A limited number of well-designed and thoroughly analysed studies demonstrate convincing positive effects measured in terms of increased species abundance, while other studies show no effects, or positive effects on some species and negative ones on others. This suggests that the prescribed management may require modification. However, modifications and improvements can only result from a regular review of all agri-environment schemes," the authors add.

The best-known agri-environment scheme success is the cirl bunting, Emberiza circlus, which was intensively studied by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, English Nature and the National Trust in the UK. The Countryside Stewardship Scheme offered a standard payment for maintaining low intensity grassland, and between 1992 and 1998 cirl buntings increased by 83% on Countryside Stewardship Scheme land compared with only 2% on land adjacent to, but outside, the Scheme.

Sutherland and Kleijn conclude: "The most striking conclusion from this review is that there is a lack of research examining whether agri-environment schemes are effective . . . Currently, agri-environment incentive schemes are being initiated in the CEE countries that will join the EU in 2004, but, as far as we know, no evaluation studies are integrated into these programmes. The implementation of nationwide schemes, without learning from the mistakes made by their predecessors in other parts of Europe, represents a missed opportunity to make agri-environment programmes as effective as possible from the outset."

The paper is one of a series of seven papers published in this issue of the Journal of Applied Ecology illustrating the value of an array of ecological approaches to assessing the impact of agricultural change. According to the editor of the Journal of Applied Ecology, Professor Steve Ormerod of Cardiff University: "With the development of the Common Agricultural Policy now at a critical phase, not only should there be a more robust assessment of the true value of agri-environment schemes, but also ecologists should be far more fully engaged with those who administer agri-environment measures at local, national and European levels."

British Ecological Society (BES)