Abstract
AbstractPolicy makers are increasingly encouraging farmers to protect or enhance habitat on their farms for wildlife conservation. However, a lack of knowledge of farmers’ opinions toward wildlife can lead to poor integration of conservation measures. We surveyed farmers to assess their perceptions of ecosystem services and disservices from perching birds, raptors, and bats—three taxa commonly targeted by conservation measures. The majority of farmers thought that perching birds and bats were beneficial for insect pest control and that raptors were beneficial for vertebrate pest control; however, fruit farmers viewed perching birds more negatively than did farmers growing other crops. Farmers using organic methods viewed all three wildlife groups more positively than conventional farmers. Farmer perception toward each wildlife group predicted their action to either attract or deter those taxa, suggesting the need to focus research and outreach on the effects of wildlife on farms for conservation programs to positively influence farmer perceptions.
Highlights
Global biodiversity loss in agricultural landscapes jeopardizes the persistence of many threatened species, and is linked with the loss of ecosystem services (Perrings et al 2006, Morandin et al 2016)
Farmers of different crop types did not differ in opinions toward bats except that nonfruit farmers viewed bats as more beneficial for crop yields than did fruit farmers (3.78 ± 0.09, P < 0.01), rice farmers believed that bats were less harmful (2.0 ± 0.19) for buildings/machinery than nonrice farmers (2.42 ± 0.08, P < 0.05), and farmers raising livestock thought bats were more beneficial (4.81 ± 0.07) for insect pest control and less harmful for crop yields (3.96 ± 0.14) than farmers not raising livestock (4.52 ± 0.07 and 3.55 ± 0.08, respectively; both P < 0.01, Appendix 4)
The multinomial logit model revealed that farmers with positive bat opinions were significantly more likely to invest in attracting bats to their farms (H4; P < 0.05) conventional farmers were less likely to invest in bats compared to organic growers (P < 0.05, Table 3)
Summary
Global biodiversity loss in agricultural landscapes jeopardizes the persistence of many threatened species, and is linked with the loss of ecosystem services (Perrings et al 2006, Morandin et al 2016). In the United States, programs such as the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), provide financial support through the Agricultural Act of 2014 (commonly known as the Farm Bill) to producers to implement conservation practices on working landscapes and to groups such as the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to educate farmers about the benefits of these practices. For these practices to successfully facilitate ecosystem service provisioning and biodiversity conservation they need to be implemented over large spatial and temporal
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