Insects, plants and succession: advantages of long-term set-aside

Abstract

Countryside quality over much of Britain depends on agricultural policies, important among which is the set-aside programme in which area based payments are made to encourage farmers to take arable land out of food production. Decisions between long-term and short-term set-aside will influence the future age profile of communities on uncultivated land, affecting their conservation value and their role as sources of pests, natural enemies and pollinators for nearby crops. Because long-term studies of set-aside in Britain are not yet available, other evidence is used to review the successional changes to be expected in a 10 year period of natural regeneration after ploughing. Succession is considered in terms of ecological attributes of plant and insect communities, rather than lists of individual species, so that the concepts are more generally applicable. In a landscape increasingly affected by disturbance, in which some groups of plant and insect species of long-established vegetation are already decreasing, long-term unploughed set-aside offers an opportunity to establish and protect patches of undisturbed perennial herbaceous vegetation and their associated fauna, helping common species to remain common and ecologically important species to remain functional.