Wet, nutrient-poor grasslands that are not fertilised and are mown late in the season provide ideal breeding habitats for meadow birds. For the farmers, this primarily means difficult management conditions, poor-quality hay and, consequently, financial losses. Interest in managing such areas is declining and, as a result of the often inadequate maintenance associated with this, plants such as soft rush are spreading rapidly and the areas are losing its value as a breeding habitat.
But just how low or high are the revenues and losses, respectively? How much does it cost to manage extensively farmed grassland with varying levels of wetness? These questions were investigated and answered in the LIFE IP GrassBirdHabitats project by the agricultural economist Prof. Dr. Albrecht Mährlein, focusing on the public land in the Special Protection Area Dümmer. The report concludes that, depending on the wetness level of the grassland, a payment per hectare per year would be required to ensure the public land at Dümmer can be managed sustainably. These findings apply exclusively to the specific situation at Dümmer. Further calculations for other regions and soil types are currently being developed by the LIFE project.
A key objective of the LIFE IP GrassBirdHabitat project is to develop and establish a result-based payment model that will permanently safeguard the management of optimal meadow bird grasslands and, with it, ensure the development and conservation of meadow bird populations. Instead of producing hay that is sometimes unusable, farmers are to “produce” meadow bird breeding pairs and be paid for doing so. Prof. Dr. Mährlein’s report forms the agro-economic basis for the design of the result-based payment model.
The full German report is freely available and can be downloaded below.
