Why geese benefit from the transition from natural vegetation to agriculture

Anthony D Fox,Kenneth F Abraham

doi:10.1007/s13280-016-0879-1

Anthony D Fox, Kenneth F Abraham

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-016-0879-1

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Abstract

The energy and nutrient content of most agricultural crops are as good as or superior to natural foods for wild geese and they tend to be available in agricultural landscapes in far greater abundance. Artificial grasslands (fertilised native swards and intensively managed reseeds) offer far superior quality forage and higher intake rates than seminatural or natural grasslands. The availability of such abundant artificial food explains the abandonment of traditional habitats for farmland by geese over the last 50–100 years and favours no reduction in current levels of exploitation of agriculture. Continental scale spatial and temporal shifts among geese undergoing spring fattening confirm their flexibility to respond rapidly to broadscale changes in agriculture. These dramatic changes support the hypothesis that use of agricultural landscapes has contributed to elevated reproductive success and that European and North American farmland currently provides unrestricted winter carrying capacity for goose populations formerly limited by wetlands habitats prior to the agrarian revolution of the last century.

Highlights

Over the last 50 years, major biodiversity loss in Europe has been associated with farmland habitats, which cover about 45% of its land area (Kleijn et al 2011)
The decline in farmland bird populations has been mainly attributed to agricultural intensification that has been supported by the European Common Agricultural Policy, CAP (Donald et al 2001, 2006; Szep et al 2012)
We have used several literature examples to show that rapid developments in agriculture in the last 100 years have resulted in a wholesale transformation in the agricultural landscape of the northern temperature regions

Summary

Introduction

Over the last 50 years, major biodiversity loss in Europe has been associated with farmland habitats, which cover about 45% of its land area (Kleijn et al 2011). The review concentrates on finding support for evidence that food quality, in particular energetic and nutritional content, is far higher on farmland than in wetlands and that this, together with the provision of single-species stands and the generation of abundant accessible waste following harvest, provides more profitable foraging, which has attracted geese onto farmed ecosystems.

Results

Conclusion