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England’s green and pleasant land: comparing land sparing and sharing in the UK


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Authors

Finch, Tom 
Balmford, AP 
Peach, W 

Abstract

Globally, agriculture is the leading threat to biodiversity. For many regions of the world, empirical evidence suggests that most species would fare least badly if food demand was met through high-yield production linked to the sparing of non-farmed habitats (‘land sparing’), rather than producing both food and wildlife in a larger area of wildlife-friendly farmland (‘land sharing’). The UK, however, may be different: several priority species are associated with sympathetically managed farmland, whilst many sensitive, land-sparing preferring species may already have been lost. We therefore explored the trade-offs and synergies between food production and wildlife conservation for two regions of lowland England. We quantified the relationship between agricultural production and abundance of individual bird species, in order to evaluate various landscape-level food production strategies, including land sparing and land sharing.

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Journal Title

Aspects of Applied Biology

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Journal ISSN

Volume Title

136

Publisher

Association of Applied Biologists

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