The Macaulay Land Use Research Institute and SCRI joined forces on 1 April 2011 to create The James Hutton Institute. It is the first Institute of its type in Europe and will make major, new contributions to the understanding of key global issues such as food, energy and environmental security.
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Low-intensity livestock systems - defining ecological attributes
E.M. Bignal
European Forum on Nature Conservation and Pastoralism, Kindrochaid, Gruinart, Bridgend, Isle of Islay, Argyll PA44 7PT, Scotland.
Abstract
It is well recognised that modern land use, particularly agriculture, is more intensive, more specialised and more mechanised than traditional land-use systems. Modernisation is accompanied by biological impoverishment and many steps have been taken to ameliorate this on intensively managed land. However, many agricultural systems, which have their origins in traditional, low-intensity farming, high in biodiversity do still survive in Europe. Unfortunately these systems have until recently been undervalued both ecologically and economically; they are also relatively little studied by ecologists
Many European livestock systems have a long history and mimic the ecological conditions needed by the plants and animals of Europe's "natural" open habitats previously grazed by large herbivores. However, characterising European livestock systems in terms of their ecological attributes is not straightforward. The complex interactions between "wildlife" and pastoral farming (the ecology of pastoralism) vary regionally as a result of differences in physical characteristics, climate, and the history of pastoral land use. Even within areas different livestock types and breeds can have fundamentally different effects on vegetation. To complicate things further the distribution of some animals is influenced by their own social behaviour as well as by environmental factors. Examples of two species (a bird, the red-billed chough, and a butterfly, the marsh fritillary) are presented which illustrate the ecological complexity within some of these more traditional systems and the importance of maintaining the system's status quo before introducing "conservation management". The ecological complexity needed by both examples is linked to scale.
The objectives of managing land either for high biodiversity or for modern livestock production are generally regarded as being incompatible. There are certainly costs as well as benefits for nature, but as a rule as the intensification of livestock production increases (and systems become increasingly divorced from their origins in nature) biological diversity decreases. This being the case it should be possible to define relationships between plant and animal communities and livestock systems if suitable data were available.
Previous attempts (by desk studies) to categorise livestock systems in terms of nature conservation value are described together with suggestions for a classification methodology which would give a more objective basis on which to define low intensity systems.