Abstract
Human actions have led to loss and degradation of wetlands, impairing their suitability as habitat especially for waterbirds. Such negative effects may be mitigated through habitat management. To date scientific evidence regarding the impacts of these actions remains scarce. We studied guild specific abundances of breeding and staging birds in response to habitat management on 15 Finnish wetlands. In this study management actions comprised several means of vegetation removal to thwart overgrowth. Management cost efficiency was assessed by examining the association between site-specific costs and bird abundances. Several bird guilds exhibited positive connections with both habitat management as well as with invested funds. Most importantly, however, red-listed species and species with special conservation concern as outlined by the EU showed positive correlations with management actions, underlining the conservation value of wetland management. The results suggest that grazing was especially efficient in restoring overgrown wetlands. As a whole this study makes it clear that wetland habitat management constitutes a feasible conservation tool. The marked association between invested funds and bird abundance may prove to be a valuable tool for decision makers when balancing costs and impact of conservation measures against one another.
Highlights
Changes in land use, degradation of fresh water bodies and climate change are currently recognized to be among the main threats to global biodiversity[1] the first two of which have direct effects on wetlands and their inhabitant organisms, while climate change affects both indirectly
Six of the wetlands are classified as Important Bird Areas (IBA) by BirdLife International and seven sites belong to the Ramsar wetland convention
To study potentially different responses to management by birds differing in ecology and/or behaviour we identified ten bird guilds based on food type, foraging behaviour and breeding habitat preferences: (i) dabbling ducks, (ii) diving omnivores, (iii) diving piscivores, (iv) swans, (v) geese, (vi) waders, (vii) black-headed gull, (viii) rallids and bittern, (ix) open habitat passerines and (x) shrub and reed bed passerines
Summary
Degradation of fresh water bodies and climate change are currently recognized to be among the main threats to global biodiversity[1] the first two of which have direct effects on wetlands and their inhabitant organisms, while climate change affects both indirectly. The original habitat of the study sites has been open meadow consisting of common reed (Phragmites australis) free low-sward vegetation and smaller patches of the high-sward plant species water horsetail (Equisetum fluviatile) and lakeshore bulrush (Schoenoplectus lacustris). In both natural succession processes and in invasive processes the common reed has been shown to establish homogenous high-sward populations, especially in response to environmental disturbance such as eutrophication[18,29].
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