1/ Today’s #rewildingscience paper recommends a 2 tier agricultural subsidy scheme for the EU. 1 Tier focused on promoting intensive but sustainable farming on productive/fertile land and the other Tier supporting #rewilding of large low productivity areas for biodiversity. 
2/ The authors begin by challenging the idea that agriculture is essential for maintaining biodiversity in Europe. Low-intensity farming is characterised by high levels of biodiversity, and the perception is agricultural land abandonment will result in the loss of biodiversity.
3/ The authors highlight that while alpha diversity (the diversity of species at a particular site) of low intensity farming can be very high (high numbers of species on meadows) compared to natural forest, it is biased towards specific groups of species.
4/ And even within groups the success of specific species varies considerably. Research in Hungry highlighted that farmland specialist birds declined following agricultural land abandonment but overall breeding bird diversity was higher in abandoned farmland.
5/ The authors recognise the biodiversity value of low intensity farming but suggest that over large spatial scales natural land can have similar or even higher levels of biodiversity, especially when natural land has wild large herbivores present to keep some areas open.
6/ Natural/wild land can create heterogenous ecosystems (ie including lots of different habitats like meadows, scrub & forest) can support high beta diversity (which captures the difference in species composition between sites) which can compensate for lower site level diversity.
7/ “ #rewilding aims at managing ecological succession to restore natural ecosystem processes, including disturbances which promote beta diversity.
8/ Given these expected higher levels of beta diversity in rewilded regions compared to extensively farmed regions, we believe that #rewilding may be a valid alternative to farming on land that is marginally productive for agriculture.”
9/ In 2012 the Common Agricultural Policy corresponded to €53 billion, about 42% of the EU budget, supporting industrialized agriculture responsible 1.6% of the EU’s GDP. Payments largely distributed according to amount of farmed land owned.
10/ 70% of the funding is available for direct income support (known as Pillar I) and about 20% for rural development (Pillar II). There are cross-compliance requirements for basic environmental, food safety, and animal welfare standards.
11/ Some Pillar II payments are specifically focused on preventing agricultural land abandonment, focused on Less Favoured Areas. Defence of these subsidies has been made around the multi benefits of supporting farming (food security, rural development & environment protection).
12/ The authors recognise the important role farmers can have in providing for the diverse needs of society. Singling out Portuguese Montado and the Spanish Dehesa cork-oak and holm-oak woodlands as particularly good examples of multi-functional farming.
13/ But these subsidies can have perverse effects by ubiquitously maintaining farming and active management even in degraded ecosystems where reduced human management could allow the restoration of the ecosystem and restore beneficial ecosystem services.
14/ The subsidies also distort land prices of marginal farmland, preventing conservation bodies acquiring land or incentivising conservation bodies to keep land in cultivable condition by mimicking farming practices.
15/ “For example, the two largest land-owning voluntary bodies in the UK, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the National Trust, get £4.8 million and £8 million a year, respectively, for owning farmland." monbiot.com/2011/11/28/big…
16/ What reforms should be made? The authors make the case for a policy distinction between fertile agricultural land and less fertile, marginal land. With fertile land remaining in intensive farming with subsidies used for habitat restoration and maintenance.
17/ These agri-environmental payments on fertile land should be optimised towards schemes that maintain biodiversity and help productivity. E.g. some keystone habitat resources help pest control, pollination, provide shelter, and protect soil and water.
18/ Other features should include pollen/nectar strips, hedgerow trees, ponds, floristically enhanced grasslands can all function as keystone habitat resources that have biodiversity benefits for bumblebees, moths, & damsel/dragonflies and are compatible with intensified farming.
19/ Evidence suggests these features can increase hay crop and pollinator-dependent crop yields. And for the latter wild pollination can improve crop quality as well.
20/ For marginal land, subsidies that are essentially supporting rural communities should not be exclusively tied to farming. This could allow the restoration and #rewilding of appropriate landscapes with biodiversity and ecosystem service benefits.
21/ “In summary, the current subsidy system should be redesigned so that owners of fertile land are encouraged to take up effective Agri-Environment Subsidy options, whilst owners of marginal land are financially encouraged to either take up rewilding options …
22/ or continue extensive farming practices for those cases (e.g. some cultural heritage landscapes) where extensive farming systems may deliver the most valuable outcome in terms of biodiversity and ecosystem services.”
23/ examples of #rewilding measures could include financial compensation per ha of land rewilded or to support the planting of woodland nuclei. (We's be interested to hear views on other rewilding measures that should be supported?)
24/ The proportion of CAP funding needed for marginal land support would need to be increased from 10% (as it was in 2012) and one way of doing this would be to cap the amount a single farmer can receive to €300,000 a year.
25/ An outstanding question is to identify when #rewilding will out perform extensive farming on marginal land for biodiversity and ecosystem service delivery. Full paper is available here: reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/…
26/ This paper is from 2015 by Merckx & @hmlfpereira in @BasicApplEcol Very pertinent to the UK following Brexit and breaking away from CAP to new subsidy scheme that may include a #rewilding provision. What is the latest @RewildingB @AliDriverUK @prjepson @LandEthics ?
