| dc.description.abstract | The decline in biodiversity is considered to be one of the most important environmental problems of
the moment. To stop this, the UN made agreements to preserve biodiversity. Each country must
implement this and design a policy to stop the decline. The focus of this paper is on The Netherlands,
where a national ecological structure (EHS) is the main way to stop the degradation of biodiversity by
supporting animal migration and habitat possibilities. An increasingly more important aspect of this
policy is the use of agricultural land. The goal of this paper is to investigate what the role of
agriculture is within the EHS. Therefore, this paper looks only at the effects of agriculture on the
undomesticated biodiversity. The findings in this paper are projected on the Natura2000 network to
search for overlapping possibilities.
The increasing importance of agricultural land for the EHS is due to policy changes: instead of buying
land, farmers are subsidized for taking precautions to prevent the negative effects of agricultural
actions on biodiversity. These precautions include the restriction of the emission of NH3 and
pesticides, delayed mowing of fields where birds breed, extensive mowing of field margins and the
(re)introduction of semi-natural elements (such as hedgerows, ditches and tree lines) to improve
habitat,- and migration possibilities. This agri-environmental management is insufficient due to
several factors. The deposition of nitrogen from background NH3 is too high. The use of pesticides in
adjacent farms can still harm animals who have a relative large habitat (more than one field).
Because farmers can choose which precautions they want to take, mostly a few are taken only. This
makes them less effective and it might cause an ecological trap in which several protective bird
species are negatively affected. Biodiversity is still decreasing, so agri-environmental managed lands
are not contributing to the EHS goal.
However, the use of agri-environmental farms as buffer around EHS areas might be a possibility to
increase biodiversity inside the EHS, provided that these farms take all necessary precautions. This
can protect animals with relative large habitats living inside the EHS from pesticides in adjacent fields
and increase the migration and habitat possibilities around the EHS. More research should be
conducted to investigate the economic and social feasibilities of such a buffer.
As for the Natura2000 network, many uncertainties make it difficult to compare the EHS with this
network. This is mainly caused by the differing abiotic conditions (soil conditions, (ground)water
levels, landscape) between EU lands. However, the creation of a buffer of agri-environmental farms
around the Natura2000 network might be worth looking into further: pesticides and fragmentation
are problems in other countries as well. | |
