Reversing declines in farmland birds: how much agri-environment provision is needed at farm and landscapes scales?

1) Agri-environment schemes (AES) are the primary policy mechanism for addressing farmland biodiversity declines across Europe. Despite previous studies on the impacts of AES on biodiversity, there is little empirical evidence on the scale of provision required to reverse declines.
2) Across three regions of lowland England with contrasting farm systems (arable, pastoral, mixed) we estimated avian Population Growth Rates (PGRs) on farmland with high AES provision (‘higher-tier’: average bird-friendly option cover = 7.4%), low AES provision (‘lower-tier’: 2.3%), and no bird-friendly AES (‘no AES’). Ten-year PGRs were derived for 24 species and three multi-species groups comprising farmland-associated species (‘farmland birds’), species of conservation concern (‘priority birds’), and species restricted to farmland (‘specialist birds’). We used PGRs to simulate the proportion of the regional farmland landscape that would have to be assigned to higher- and lower-tier agreements to stabilise..., Full details of the data collection methods can be found in the Journal of Applied Ecology paper., The accompanying README.txt file provides usage notes for the three .csv files.