Optimizing conservation in species-specific agricultural landscapes

Area of Science:

• Ecology and Conservation Biology
• Wildlife Management
• Landscape Ecology

Background:

• Grassland bird recovery is crucial in agricultural landscapes, but species-specific responses to landscape complexity and spatial scales of effect are poorly understood.
• Effective conservation requires regional planning that integrates landscape-scale processes and species-specific needs for grassland bird populations.
• Existing conservation strategies may not adequately address the varying habitat requirements and sensitivities of different grassland bird species.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and apply a spatially explicit approach for optimizing grassland conservation, considering species-specific landscape responses and recovery priorities.
• To estimate the relationship between landscape structure and the abundance of eastern meadowlarks, field sparrows, and northern bobwhites.
• To design and evaluate alternative conservation strategies based on multi-attribute utility theory for prioritizing species recovery.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a hierarchical distance-sampling model with an embedded scale-of-effect predictor to analyze landscape structure-abundance relationships.
• Employed a novel spatially explicit optimization procedure based on multi-attribute utility theory to create conservation strategies.
• Assessed species-specific responses to landscape features, including patch adjacencies, patch densities, and grassland density, across varying distances.

Main Results:

• Eastern meadowlarks and field sparrows responded more to landscape patch adjacencies, while northern bobwhites responded to both adjacencies and densities, particularly grassland density.
• The influence of landscape features on bird abundance decreased with distance, with negligible effects beyond 0.8 km for eastern meadowlarks, 2.5 km for field sparrows, and 8.4 km for northern bobwhites.
• Northern bobwhites are predicted to benefit significantly from future grassland conservation, irrespective of prioritization, unlike eastern meadowlarks and field sparrows.

Conclusions:

• Grassland bird species exhibit distinct, distance-dependent relationships with landscape structure, necessitating species-specific conservation approaches.
• The developed quantitative, customizable, and predictive framework can optimize conservation in heterogeneous ecosystems by integrating landscape processes and species prioritization.
• Effective regional conservation planning must acknowledge and incorporate the varied spatial scales at which different grassland bird species interact with their environment.