Supporting grassland biodiversity by traditional Hungarian Grey cattle grazing: The magnitude of weed suppression and biodiversity effects are changing along moisture gradient

Conservation of grassland biodiversity is a vital issue worldwide. Extensively managed pastures are of crucial importance in sustaining biodiversity both at a local- and a landscape-level. Most of Europe's former extensive pastures became either intensively used or abandoned. These led to unfavourable changes in species composition, resulting a  loss of biodiversity and linked ecosystem functions and services like biological control, pollination and seed dispersal. History, culture and tradition also suggest the re-introduction of traditional extensive grazing by local breeds. Traditional low-intensity grazing is important in (i) sustaining biodiversity, (ii) in the facilitation of the immigration and establishment of target species and (iii) in the suppression of noxious species. Less attention was given to the suppression of noxious species compared to the first two issues. Cattle grazing is especially suitable for sustaining grassland biodiversity, because of its lower selectivity compared to sheep or horse grazing. However, the effects of cattle grazing strongly depend on the cattle breed, and the duration and intensity of grazing. 

 

Fig. 1. Traditional Hungarian Grey cattle grazing in the Hortobágy Puszta (East-Hungary, photo by Balázs Deák).

To mimic natural grazing regimes of grasslands traditional cattle grazing with robust breeds (e.g. Heck cattle or Hungarian Grey cattle) in low stocking rates are considered to be proper.. Thus, this kind of management is increasingly introduced in nature conservation and restoration practice in many parts of Europe.

In our paper we evaluated the effectiveness of traditional Hungarian Grey cattle grazing in suppressing noxious species in three grassland types of a mosaic alkali landscape. We tested the following questions: (i) How does cattle grazing affect species composition and diversity of the three grassland types? (ii) What are the effects of grazing on short-lived and perennial noxious species? (iii) Are there distinct effects of grazing for dry-, mesophilous- and wet grassland types?

Our results demonstrated that grazing by Hungarian Grey cattle strongly affected the species richness and composition even in the short run. We also detected a remarkable effect on the specific heights: in all studied grassland types the cover-weighted specific heights were significantly lower in grazed plots. This was due to grazing benefitted creeping and rosette-forming species like Plantago lanceolata, P. major, P. media, Taraxacum officinale, Trifolium repens and Polygonum aviculare.

Our results suggest that the traditional grazing by Hungarian Grey cattle have beneficial effects already in the short run by the suppression of noxious species in all studied grassland types. The increase in biodiversity in mesophilous and wet grasslands was likely caused by the high rate of suppression of tall-growing noxious competitor species Elymus repens and Phragmites communis.

We found that the effect of grazing was quite different in grassland types along the dry-mesophilous-wet gradient with the same stocking rates (1 cattle/ha). It was the most expressed in the wet grassland type, although yearly fluctuations were also the highest here. Moderate yearly fluctuations were detected in the dry grassland, but compositional changes were more directed and not likely influenced by year-to-year differences (i.e. by precipitation differences). The effects were intermediate in the mesophilous grasslands between the two other grassland types. We can conclude that extensive Hungarian Grey cattle grazing is effective even in the short run to suppress noxious species and to create a mosaic vegetation structure of short- and tall species, which enables to maintain high species richness in the landscape. In addition, Hungarian Grey cattle can feed in open habitats along a moisture gradient from dry grasslands to wet habitats including also alkali marshes. Thus, in highly mosaic landscapes it is better suited for grazing management than other non-traditional livestock types, which need a more homogeneous vegetation structure.

For more detailed information read our open access paper entitled ‘Traditional cattle grazing in a mosaic alkali landscape: Effects on grassland biodiversity along a moisture gradient’ published in PLOS One which you can freely download here. 

Contact addresses 

Péter TÖRÖK, Orsolya VALKÓ, Balázs DEÁK, András KELEMEN, Béla TÓTHMÉRÉSZ

MTA-DE Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Research Group

E-mail addresses:
molinia@gmail.com (PT)
valkoorsi@gmail.com (OV)
debalazs@gmail.com (BD)
kelemen.andras12@gmail.com (AK)
tothmerb@gmail.com (BT)

Common pastures in Transylvania (Romania) – or maybe not so common anymore?

Pasture in Southern Transylvania, Romania

Over the past two years, I have talked to many livestock owners (many consider themselves more ‘householders’ – gospodari in Romanian – than farmers), as well as people from public administration and nature conservation, about the use of common grazing land in Southern Transylvania. This type of land use stretches back over centuries (the area was historically inhabited by the Transylvanian Saxons, about which previous posts in this blog have been written), and in each village institutions have built up to govern common grazing. A (very) rough estimate suggests that currently, at least half of permanent pasture in Romania is communally owned and used, and in the Târnava Mare region where I work private ownership of grazing land is practically unknown. At least, that is what appears to be the case at first glance.

Of course the story is complicated by many factors, but a major influence on the recent use patterns of common land has been the introduction of EU Common Agricultural Policy subsidies per hectare in 2007. Instead of the previous situation of all villagers sending their animals to the pasture in the village herd, people now have an incentive (subsidy money) to rent as large an area of communal pasture from the local authorities as they can, for as long as they can. Although the stipulations attached to the EU subsidies have in many cases meant that management of the pasture has improved from a biodiversity point of view relative to 10 or 15 years ago, quasi-private use of certain areas appears to be leading to overgrazing in some parts, and abandonment in others.  From a social point of view, competition for the money – and thus corruption – mean that under this system it is again the small farmers who lose out. Not owning enough animals themselves to rent pasture, and rarely organized enough to fight for the subsidies for the land that they graze, the playing field has been tipped against them.

Whilst the Enclosures forcibly and relatively rapidly privatized common land in Western Europe in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, it seems like market forces and subsidies are doing the same in Eastern Europe by stealth. Whether this is a positive or negative development for rural areas in Romania is debatable: in my opinion it will largely depend on how local farmers – and gospodari – self-organise and cooperate in the future to use their common pastures.

Reference

SUTCLIFFE, L., PAULINI, I., JONES, G., MARGGRAF, R., PAGE, N.. Pastoral commons use in Romania and the role of the Common Agricultural Policy. International Journal of the Commons http://www.thecommonsjournal.org/index.php/ijc/article/view/367/313 (OPEN ACCESS)

Laura Sutcliffe: Institute for Plant Sciences, University of Göttingen, Germany sutcliffe.laura@gmail.com

Towards Effective Nature Conservation on Farmland: Making Farmers Matter

The agri-environmental programme of the European Union is the key policy tool for achieving environmental protection in agricultural landscapes, including the maintenance of biodiversity in Europe. In short the EU’s Agri-Environment Schemes, pay farmers to manage their land for the benefit of particular habitats and species. The average annual expenditure 2007-2013 from the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) reaches €3.3 billion.

In our review paper published in Conservation Letters we argue that standard incentives for environmentally friendly farming-practices are often inefficient and demotivating. Farmers are paid to apply some simple measures following prescribed procedures that are often not tailor-suited to the local conditions, and often fail to deliver tangible results. This way the payments reinforce a money oriented culture and disqualify farmers as professionals through activities, in which skills and traditional knowledge are not utilized.

In our review we highlight that:

- offering financial incentives for performing behaviours can lead to previously intrinsically motivated behaviours becoming financially motivated;

- payments should be constructed in a way that leads to creation of cultural (skills and knowledge) and social capital (i.e. access to shared peer group resources) so that knowledge of conservation management becomes socially valuable;

- we should develop a better understanding of farmers and farmer cultures through applying frameworks from rural sociology (farming styles) and from social psychology (the Theory of Planned Behaviour).

Farming styles can be used to improve the effectiveness of AESs by contributing to the creation of customised support packages that appeal to the characteristics and attitudes of targeted farming styles. The Theory of Planned Behaviour might be a particularly useful approach in this context. This theory proposes three key components influencing behaviour (attitudes toward the behaviour, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural) that are predicted by specific beliefs and evaluations about the outcomes of behaviour (for the attitude), the different persons or groups who are relevant to the person (for subjective norm) and the potential skills, opportunities, and barriers one thinks are relevant for performing the behaviour (for perceived behavioural control).

We are not pleading for a complete withdrawal of financial rewards for conservation behaviour. However, there already is some evidence that switching to a ‘payment by results’ approach, may also deliver environmental benefits and be associated with more enduring social and cultural changes. The intended result is that, unlike conventional schemes, farmers are encouraged to engage with conservation and need to innovate and to cooperate to achieve greater financial reward. Result-oriented schemes thus create common goals between farmers and conservationists, enable productivity comparisons with conventional farming products, and lead to the creation of cultural (skills and knowledge) and social capital (i.e. access to shared peer group resources) as knowledge of conservation management becomes socially valuable.

A complementary approach that would help to reinforce the “payments by results” approach is to influence social networks within the farming community. Benchmarking instruments may be useful and encourage farmers to exchange experiences and learn from each other. This may lead to normative pressure to keep up with others who are doing better and may create a culturally embedded social change.

Finally, we argue that as in many other fields of the multidisciplinary science of Conservation Biology, also regarding farmland biodiversity, close involvement of social scientists with their expertise, theories and methods is a prerequisite for optimal progress in the field. They can contribute to place farmland biodiversity in the hands and minds of farmers.

Reference

                            

Geert R. de Snoo, Irina Herzon, Henk Staats, Rob J.F. Burton, Stefan Schindler, Jerry van Dijk, Anne Marike Lokhorst, James M. Bullock, Matt Lobley, Thomas Wrbka, Gerald Schwarz, C.J.M. Musters. 2012. Towards Effective Nature Conservation on Farmland: Making Farmers Matter. Conservation Letters, accepted.

Authors and addresses

Geert R. de Snoo – 1) Leiden University, Institute of Environmental Sciences, P.O. box 9518, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands; 2) Wageningen University, Centre for Ecosystem Studies, P.O. box 47, 6700 AA Wageningen, The Netherlands

E-mail: geert.desnoo@wur.nl

Irina Herzon - University of Helsinki, Department of Agricultural Sciences, P.O. box 27 Helsinki, Finland. E-mail: herzon@mappi.helsinki.fi

Henk Staats – Leiden University, Institute for Psychological Research, P.O. box 9555, 2300 RB Leiden, NL

Rob J.F. Burton - Centre for Rural Research, N-7491 Trondheim, Norway

Stefan Schindler – 1) University of Vienna, Department of Conservation Biology, Vegetation & Landscape Ecology, Rennweg 14, A-1030 Vienna, Austria; 2) CIBIO, Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos, Campus Agrário de Vairão, Universidade do Porto, 4485-661 Vairão, Portugal

E-mail: stefan_schindler75@yahoo.es

Jerry van Dijk - Utrecht University, Faculty of Geosciences, Department of Innovation and Environmental Sciences, P.O. box 80115, 3508 TC Utrecht, The Netherlands

Anne Marike Lokhorst - Wageningen University Communication Strategies, P.O. Box 8130, 6700 EW Wageningen, The Netherlands

James M. Bullock - Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Benson Lane OX10 8BB Wallingford, United Kingdom

Matt Lobley - University of Exeter, Centre for Rural Policy Research, Rennes Drive EX4 4RJ Exeter, United Kingdom

Thomas Wrbka - University of Vienna, Department of Conservation Biology, Vegetation & Landscape Ecology, Rennweg 14, A-1030 Vienna, Austria. E-mail: thomas.wrbka@univie.ac.at

Gerald Schwarz - Johann Heinrich von Thünen Institute, Institute of Farm Economics, Bundesallee 50, 38116 Braunschweig, Germany

C.J.M. Musters - Leiden University, Institute of Environmental Sciences, P.O. box 9518, 2300 RA Leiden, Th

Common Agricultural Policy reform - Study highlights the need to reconnect people and nature

Traditional farming landscapes around the world are rich in biodiversity and cultural heritage, both of which are typically lost from areas dominated by modern agriculture. A new international study published in the leading journal Conservation Letters (2012; DOI: 10.1111/j.1755-263X.2012.00227.x) argues for a novel approach for the sustainable development of traditional farming landscapes. Such landscapes face a conundrum: on the one hand, their social and economic development is a high priority, but on the other hand, conventional development pathways can destroy their immense natural and cultural heritage.

According to the lead author of the study, Professor Joern Fischer from Leuphana University Lueneburg, the findings have implications for the upcoming 2013 reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP): "Virtually all of the debate about the CAP reform to date has been about who ought to receive farming subsidies in the future, and for which practices. The debate is dominated by lobby groups focusing either on economic growth, or the modernisation of farming practices, or the environment. A much more holistic approach is needed to develop a vision for the future of Europe's agricultural landscapes."

 A key challenge is to maintain high biodiversity, while also allowing for socioeconomic development. Dr Tibor Hartel, co-author of the study, works in Transylvania in Central Romania, one of Europe's most biodiverse farming landscapes: "Our landscapes are highly biodiverse, and the CAP reform should help to maintain the immense natural heritage in landscapes such as those in Transylvania. But people here are poor, so we must also find ways to develop economically, too. It can't be one or the other, we need both!"

Professor Tobias Kümmerle from the Geography Department of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, who also contributed to the study, has worked across Eastern Europe. His work has repeatedly shown what conventional agriculture can do to biodiversity: "In many regions of Eastern Europe, agriculture is now practiced intensively, with big fields, and lots of chemical inputs. Implementing this kind of agriculture in Europe’s few remaining traditional landscapes would destroy their exceptional biodiversity." 

But how can biodiversity conservation and economic development be harmonised? Professor Fischer argues that we need to think outside the box. "It seems like at present, all we can think of is to somehow pay people so they keep using ancient practices. The idea is that we give them subsidies to effectively preserve the past. A preservation strategy will fail: it is an artificial link between people and nature. Instead of such artificial links, we need more meaningful linkages between people and the environment."

Reflecting on the nature of traditional linkages, Dr Hartel says: "In the traditional societies of Eastern Europe people have had very direct connections with nature. People looked after the land, and the land gave them crops, fresh water, hay for domestic livestock, fruit and many other ecosystem services. The inherent incentive for using sustainable land use strategies was the need to maintain these ecosystem services – unlike today, it’s never been about payments. Besides financial incentives, we need to develop strategies to keep the inherent connection between people and nature in traditional landscapes."

The study concludes that the CAP reform must think beyond narrowly focused subsidies geared either at enhancing agricultural production, or at maintaining traditional and potentially outdated practices. Local initiatives should be supported that aim to re-create genuine links between people and nature, for example via regional specialty food products (such as fine cheeses or wine), or via cultural and ecological tourism. Professor Fischer concludes: "The CAP reform is a huge opportunity. Instead of just debating who ought to get which slice of the subsidy cake, the EU could use this opportunity to lead the world in systematically re-connecting people and nature. The benefits of such a move for sustainable development can't be overstated."

(source: https://www.hu-berlin.de/press-portal)

FURTHER INFORMATION

Prof. Dr. Tobias Kümmerle
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Phone: +49 30 2093-9372
Email: tobias.kuemmerle@geo.hu-berlin.de
Web: www.geographie.hu-berlin.de

Wood-pastures in Hungary – the herders’ perspective

The influence of old and active woodland grazing by domestic livestock in wood pastures is an important element of the traditional landscape of the Carpathian Basin. Following several landscape-history studies, this fact became recently known among Hungarian ecologists. One of the reasons why „the grazing in wood by livestock” has got in the focus of researchers in this area is that in Hungary nearly all the wood pastures are abandoned or becoming abandoned, leading to major traditional knowledge and biodiversity loss without having just a few information about this habitat type. Our aim to get understand and discover the history and methods of woodpasturing and the effect of woodpasturing to the biodiversity by interdisciplinary methods (landscape history, vegetation, zoology and traditional ecological knowledge research). We work in different regions of Hungary and in Szeklerland in Transylvania in Romania, where traditional land use is still maintained at several places, and therefore these areas could have major importance in understanding natural and cultural functions of wood-pastures.

A typical wood-pasture  between 19-21^th 

century. The picture was took by Ferenc Sándor

 in 1960-1970.*

Wood-pasture is a habitat type which does not only depend on the natural environment, but on human-related activities, too. Regulations, economy, livestock type all affect this habitat and most importantly the man himself, who works there day after day. The change of these factors identifies the concept, the definition and the managment of the wood-pastures. After the Enlightenment in Hungary the main changes were in the 18-19^th century: the forest- and pastureland seperation; in the first half of 20^th century: forestry law and the industralization, in the second half of 20^th century: the socialization and after the privatization.

Cserépfalu wood-pasture managed by
Bükk National Park, grazed by Hungarian grey cattle.

And now we are in the beginning of the 21^th century… and most of the Hungarian wood-pastures from 5500 ha were abandoned. These were mapped by Hungarian Vegetation Survey (Bölöni et al. 2008). Today wood-pastures managed by national parks (rangers), a few enthaustic farmers and herders.  

To understand recent situation of the Hungarian wood-pastures we carried out open and semi-structured interviews with herders-farmers and rangers (working in nature conservation) in Hungary, together with participant observation. Herders'  and  rangers'  gave  diverse  and sometimes very different definitions and answers, in spite of the fact that the fundamental aim is the long-distance maintenance of the pasture for everybody. 

Year by year less and less traditonaly herder
works on wood-pastures. He is one of them,
who was born in a herder family and still work.

But we can understand much more easily if we look the different values attributed by rangers and herders. The most important value of a wood-pasture for rangers is related to the landscape and biodiversity, and for herders to pasturing and feeding the livestock. For me one of the most interesting data was, thet the herders do not entitle an area as a wood pasture, what professional conservation managers would call a wood pasture, they simply call it: pasture. For the herders, coming from traditional herder families „the trees on the pastureland” is not a separate habitat. „The trees on the pastureland” is natural, continuous and essential.  They  see and use the landscape as a whole system.  In practice of the traditional pasturing system this means the animals graze all over the boundary of the village (with the herder considering the forcoming season and weather). At the same time the usage of a wood-pasture means a micro-scale view too (for example: conscious tree and shrub selection).

In order to improve the conservation of wood-pastures it is essential to view this habitat type through the managers eyes, and the best we can do is joining them to pasture at least for one day…

Anna Varga

varga.anna@gmail.com

University of Pécs

Institute of Biology, Department of Plant Systematics and Geobotany ,

Pécs, Ifjúság útja 6., H-7624, Hungary,

 Literarture

Bölöni, J., Molnár, Zs., Biró, M. & Horváth, F. (2008): Distribution of the (semi-) natural habitats in Hungary II. Woodlands and shrublands. Acta Botanica Hungarica 50 (Suppl.), pp.107–148

*(To the first picture) After forest and pastureland seperation (1862) the regular grazing and clearing of the area is controlled by the community of the farmers of  Olaszfalu and the area called “Olaszfalui Volt Úrbéres Gazdák Legelője”. In the beginning of the 1950s, there was regular grazing and cleaning in the area, and there was 10% woodland (Fagus sylvatica, Quecus cerris, Pyrus pyraster, Carpinus betulus, Acer campestre).  Since the establishment of the soviet co-operative in the 1960s, the number of animals started to decrease, consequently the regular  maintenance and clearing of the pasture ceased. In the last few years the former pasture was utilized as a  hunting ground. In 2007 the territory has been divided into parcels. With the filling up of parkland stands today 52% of the area consists of closed woodland. 17% of the woodland is older than 50 years, 38% is between 30 and 40, while 45% is between 10 and 20 years.