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This research focuses on conservation of traditional rural biotopes, which are biodiverse meadows and wood-pastures that are dependent on management through grazing or mowing. These low-intensity management actions have become rare as a result of agricultural modernisation. I have utilised a social-ecological approach in order to seek for the most critical factors hindering conservation of traditional rural biotopes in Finland. I also explore practical solutions that have the potential to improve their conservation status. The coverage of traditional rural biotopes has faced severe habitat loss during the last 150 years. This has led to endangerment of several habitat types and species that dwell in them. As a result of habitat loss and dynamic land use history, contemporary factors drive remnant biodiversity related to traditional rural biotopes in Central Finland. Therefore an emphasis on present, not past, better supports their conservation. On national level, the management actions are not targeted to ecologically most valuable sites. On site-level, management actions foster local biodiversity, but also cultural heritage and human–nature relationship. Understanding of this multiscale social-ecological complexity is crucial in promoting management actions among landowners according to conservation goals. Yet current agri-environmental policies treat the social-ecological interactions in a simplified manner, and therefore they do not self-evidently encourage management of traditional rural biotopes. My results show that the inefficiency in conservation of traditional rural biotopes largely follows from a scale mismatch between the extent and location of current management actions and the desired ecological response. More effective conservation of traditional rural biotopes calls for adoption of a new governance approach that aims for resilience through local focus and increased actor participation.

Traditional rural biotopes (TRBs) are threatened habitats that host significant biodiversity and several ecosystem services, and depend on active management such as low-intensity grazing. The current study explores private landowners’ decision-making on TRB management and abandonment within a social-ecological system framework. We provide insight into supporting resilience of TRB systems in the face of agricultural modernization. Using a mixed methods approach with content analysis and Q analysis, we demonstrate that TRB management fosters cultural, biological, aesthetic, and utilitarian values. These are reflected in different ways through conservationist's, profit-oriented farmer's, landscape manager's, and landscape admirer's discourses on TRB management. Overall, management reinforces landowners’ place attachment, and reflects an approach to landscapes as spatial representations of cultural heritage and identity over multiple generations. Landowners consider TRB pasturage and its social-ecological outcomes motivating and rewarding. Giving up grazing cattle and perceived bureaucracy of national agri-environment scheme contribute to TRB abandonment. Landowners point out that current policies detach TRB management from what is seen as “regular agriculture”, and the focus on monetary compensation bypasses the multiple values tied to TRB management. Based on our results, we suggest that promoting TRBs requires reconfiguring the current arrangement of remedial management payments and adopting a more participatory governance approach. Locally, resilience of TRB systems relies on the connections between landowners and landscapes that foster sense of place and landscape identity, which can be supported by knowledge sharing and collaborative grazing efforts among landowners. peerReviewed