How much will it cost to save grassland biodiversity?

HODGSON, J; MONTSERRAT-MARTÍ, G; TALLOWIN, J; THOMPSON, K; DÍAZ, S; CABIDO, M; ET AL.

BIOLOGICAL CONSERVATION

Opulus Press

Lugar: Uppsala; Año: 2005 vol. 122 p. 263 - 273

0006-3207

Conservation initiatives are failing to arrest the global loss of biodiversity. From our mechanistic studies of ecology and economics, we suggest that for grazing lands the root cause of this failure is a powerful economic deterrent to measures designed to protect diversity. We identify an exponential relationship between monetary returns and intensi.cation of farming methods over an extremely wide range of grassland productivities and farm systems. At intermediate to high levels of fertility, however, this exponential increase in .nancial bene.t from intensi.cation is associated with a decline in biodiversity and an acceleration of the ecological processes driving species losses from grassland ecosystems