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Introducing wild crops and plants complements intentions for improved biodiversity outcomes in agricultural landscapes; and provides opportunity for in-situ conservation of a diverse range of wild plants and crops, and improved connectivity between conserved areas. This opinion article considers definitions and common value of conserving wild crops and plants, and crop wild relatives, in-situ and ex-situ. Rewilding definitions and common uses for policy and practice are described. The Ecological Sensitivity within Human Realities (ESHR) concept was developed to guide human natural-environment interactions in agricultural systems and landscapes for improved functional biodiversity outcomes. It is used to assess possible appropriateness of rewilding for agricultural systems and landscapes. The assessment demonstrates how agricultural systems and landscapes are often excluded, despite appearing a useful term to encourage such conservation efforts. The importance of a more specific term rather than a more specific definition and use of rewilding is suggested. Agricultural wilding is introduced as a more specific term for introducing and conserving wild crops and plants for agricultural purposes, as wild productive systems, useful for policy or other approaches the guide human natural-environment interactions. The conceptual approach to the article provides theoretical suggestions for minimum proportions of wild crops and plants for wild productive systems according to native and non native landscapes. From a conceptual to applied discussion, relevance of agricultural wilding for coffee farming landscapes is explained in some depth, and for an existing biodiversity campaign and an EU agricultural policy, briefly.

Land clearing for agricultural use is a primary driver of biodiversity loss and fragmentation of natural ecosystems. Restoring natural habitat connectivity by retaining quality habitats and increasing on-farm tree cover contributes to species' mobility and persistence in agricultural landscapes. Nonetheless, remarkably few studies have quantified the impacts of on-farm practices for species' mobility measured as functional connectivity within the context of farm and broader spatial levels of landscape organization. We tested how adding and removing trees in different configurations on a farm comprised of coffee plantations and cattle pastures can help evaluate species’ mobility at the farmscape level (an area comprising the farm plus a 1.5 km buffer area). We coupled bird capture data and scenario modeling to assess species mobility of five neotropical bird species with distinct life history characteristics representing a gradient of forest dependency. We used seven years of mist-netting data to estimate species habitat affinity and to predict species mobility using the Circuitscape model across a 4371 ha farmscape in Costa Rica. Circuitscape allowed us to estimate changes in movement probability and relative changes in resistance to movement that species experience during dispersal (measured as resistance distance and passage area through which species can move) under four farmscape management scenarios. The four land-use scenarios included: (a) the 2011 farmscape land-use composition and configuration, b) converting all existing live fences to post-and-wire fence lines in the farm c) converting simplified coffee agroforests to multistrata coffee agroforests in the farm, and d) placing multistrata live fences around the perimeter of every parcel and roads on the farm. Model results suggest that existing multistrata live fences maintain the sporadic movement of all five species irrespective of forest dependence. Likewise, adding multistrata live fences around individual fields presents a more efficient strategy for increasing species mobility than multistrata coffee agroforestry systems in the assessed farmscape, by doubling the passage areas available to all species, although it created labyrinths with “dead-ends” for two species. While retaining large habitat patches remains important for conservation, managing on-farm connectivity complements these efforts by increasing movement probability and reducing dispersal resistance for forest-dependent bird species.

International audience; Soil erosion is a widespread problem in agricultural landscapes, particularly in regions with strong rainfall events. Vegetated field margins can mitigate negative impacts of soil erosion off-site by trapping eroded material. Here we analyse how local management affects the trapping capacity of field margins in a monsoon region of South Korea, contrasting intensively and extensively managed field margins on both steep and shallow slopes. Prior to the beginning of monsoon season, we equipped a total of 12 sites representing three replicates for each of four different types of field margins (“intensive managed flat”, “intensive managed steep”, “extensive managed flat” and “extensive managed steep”) with Astroturf mats. The mats (n 1⁄4 15/site) were placed before, within and after the field margin. Sediment was collected after each rain event until the end of the monsoon season. The effect of management and slope on sediment trapping was analysed using linear mixed effects models, using as response variable either the sediment collected within the field margin or the difference in sediment collected after and before the field margin. There was no difference in the amount of sediment reaching the different field margin types. In contrast, extensively managed field margins showed a large reduction in collected sediment before and after the field margins. This effect was pronounced in steep field margins, and increased with the size of rainfall events. We conclude that a field margin management promoting a dense vegetation cover is a key to mitigating negative off-site effects of soil erosion in monsoon regions, particularly in field margins with steep slopes.

This paper presents a spatially explicit bioeconomic analysis of species conservation in agricultural areas. Wild species in fragmented agricultural landscapes are best approached as metapopulations consisting of a finite number of local populations. Economic analysis of species conservation in fragmented habitat needs to deal with metapopulation theory and its theoretical implications. This paper presents a spatially explicit bioeconomic model consisting of a straightforward economic land use model and an applied metapopulation model. This paper demonstrates that multiple equilibria and multiple local optima in metapopulations might lead to nonconvexities in the production possibilities set of agricultural profits and species conservation.

Field boundaries are man-made features found worldwide and their multiple functions in agricultural landscapes are now widely recognised. These landscape features have declined drastically in many developed countries as a result of agricultural intensification. In Great Britain, field boundaries are regarded as elements of particular significance in the countryside, both in term of extent and value, whether ecological, cultural, or aesthetic. The Countryside Surveys of Great Britain, a national ecological, surveillance programme initiated in the late 1970s, provides information about the change in extent and ecological condition of field boundaries. In this paper, we present the main results on field boundaries derived from the latest survey, Countryside Survey 2000. These include stock and change of boundaries for the 1990-1998 period as well as an update of the previously published 1984-1990 data. Special attention is given to the evolution of the length of hedges. Applicability of the Countryside Survey methodology to other monitoring programmes and further use of the data is discussed together with the potential ecological consequences of the changes described in the paper.