Land use and management intensity affect the suitability of habitats for wildlife in Europe

Common, wide-ranging vertebrate species, such as foxes, may be finding more suitable habitat in towns and cities than in the wider landscape, while rarer species – which live in smaller areas – appear to favour different habitats, according to new research into species across Europe.

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The study, conducted by the University of Surrey, the Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria and the Natural History Museum, modelled habitat suitability for 229 cropland and forest vertebrate species across Europe. The researchers found that what a piece of land is used for, and how intensively that land is farmed or managed, both matter to wildlife – but with important differences between species.

Species that already tolerate people, including many widespread birds and mammals, appear to benefit disproportionately from land-use intensification compared with rarer, more specialised species, which could be left behind as landscapes change.

The researchers used species distribution models – a technique usually applied to climate data – to test how land use and land-use intensity affected the likelihood of a species occurring across its European range. Large-scale studies of this kind usually test for the effects of climate change on biodiversity, so the researchers developed a new methodology to focus on the effects of land use.

Land-use intensity broadly reflects how heavily managed the land is – high-intensity cropland, for example, involves more machinery, fertiliser and pesticide use than low-intensity cropland, while high-intensity forestry means faster harvest cycles and more uniform tree planting. The models covered 123 birds, 86 mammals and 20 reptiles and amphibians.

Overall, land use type usually had a larger effect on habitat suitability than how intensively that land was managed. However, for cropland species, low-intensity cropland and grassland tended to be somewhat more suitable than their high-intensity equivalents. For forest species, land-use intensity had the greatest effect on habitat suitability for widespread species, which tended to benefit from intensification.

Urban land, by contrast, stood out – it was the most suitable habitat for a lot of species.

Our results show that the species that already share our cities – common, widespread generalists – appear to find urban areas more suitable than the rarer, more specialised species with smaller ranges. That doesn’t mean building over the countryside is good for wildlife. It means the species we should be most concerned about are the rarer, more specialised ones, which need something quite different from the landscape around them. Professor Zoe Harris, Director of the Centre for Environment and Sustainability, Co-Director of the Institute for Sustainability

We hope this can feed into EU biodiversity conservation, particularly helping to achieve the Nature Restoration Regulation's goals for conserving farmland and forest birds. For example, our findings add to the evidence that reducing how intensively we manage cropland and grassland, or restoring more water and wetland habitats, would particularly benefit farmland birds. Cutting back on forestry intensity could also help certain species, mainly the rarer forest specialists. Sophie Tudge, who led the research during a placement at the IIASA, which formed part of her PhD at the University of Surrey

The study is published in Landscape Ecology.

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