Abstract
The common hamster is a critically endangered species, but it is also perceived as a pest. Searching for an economic reason for its protection can be an argument to prevent its extinction. The purpose of this paper is to reveal the identification services provided by hamsters in the agricultural ecosystem and the determination of their correlation with human welfare. We propose the methods that can be applied for this purpose, and we check if the knowledge of the species is sufficient in order to use available methods for estimating the value of the services. The common hamster is a provider of supporting, regulating, and cultural services. Estimating their value is difficult because (1) available knowledge on the species’ ecology requires an update, in many aspects, due to changes to agricultural practices that have taken place since the 1970s (e.g., assessment of actual losses to cereal, vegetable, or root crops), and also extending by context, enabling the economic valuation of services (e.g., determination of impact range on various habitat components); it is also necessary to identify the correlations between profits and losses caused by this species; (2) there is a low level of public knowledge on the presence of hamsters and their role in the ecosystem. Education, primarily for consumers, followed by the promotion of hamsters as an umbrella and key species for agricultural areas, may result in the development of cultural services, which will increase the economic value of the services provided by hamsters.
Highlights
Agriculture is currently identified as one of the primary sources of environmental degradation [1]
The vast majority of unnoticed benefits derived from the ecosystems is the effect of a complex ecological process, the outcomes of which are frequently delayed in time, while the resulting changes are of a non-linear nature
On the basis of MEA classification [10], we determined the basic categories of services, and, within them, based on the knowledge of the biology and ecology of the species, we initially identified the individual services provided by the common hamster
Summary
Agriculture is currently identified as one of the primary sources of environmental degradation [1]. Working on an agricultural farm has become a profession geared to increasing profit from sales of arable crops. The negative effects of biodiversity loss are not, directly felt on a small scale of an individual farm, especially in the short term. The ecosystem pressure increases gradually until it reaches the threshold at which certain ecosystem functions are disrupted [2]. The effects of this pressure are difficult to project due to the unobvious role of individual species, correlations between living and non-living ecosystem components, and the consequences for the process of service provision by the ecosystem. The control of weeds or organisms causing losses to arable crops
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