Big wheel keep on turnin': Linking grower attitudes, farm management, and delivery of avian ecosystem services

Abstract

Growers may be more likely to adopt wildlife-friendly practices if they perceive that beneficial species are present and conservation actions are successful. At the same time, a farm's landscape and regional context may influence whether biodiversity, including wild birds, are likely to provide ecosystem services or disservices. Here, across two Bird Conservation Regions in the western USA, we assessed a feedback loop that links growers' attitudes towards birds, farming practices, and bird assemblages' hypothesized impacts. To do so, we paired a grower questionnaire survey, bird point count surveys, and farm management and landscape classifications. We found that growers generally exhibited more positive attitudes towards raptors than songbirds and allies (e.g., flycatchers, woodpeckers, hummingbirds). Attitudes towards raptors were more positive when farms were embedded in more natural landscapes and had greater proportions of nonnative birds. Growers held more positive attitudes towards songbirds and allies related to production (yields, crop quality, insect control) when their farms were in the Northern Pacific Rainforest region and were embedded in more natural landscapes. Growers' attitudes towards songbirds and allies related to disease/infrastructure (food safety, animal disease, building/machinery damage, vertebrate control) were more positive in the Northern Pacific Rainforest region as landscapes became more natural, but these relationships did not hold for Coastal California. However, growers' attitudes towards birds were mostly unrelated to the practices used on the farm. Understanding these feedback loops is crucial to increasing uptake of and retention in conservation programs for rapidly declining farmland bird communities.