Birds of Prey in Agricultural Landscapes: The Role of Agriculture Expansion and Intensification

GRANDE JUAN MANUEL; JOSÉ HERNÁN SARASOLA; PAULA MAITEN OROZCO VALOR; LIÉBANA MARIA SOLEDAD

In Birds of Prey .Ecology and conservation in the XXI century

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Año: 2018; p. 197 - 228

The introduction of agricultural activity (including livestock farming) in naturalenvironments affects all the natural processes occurring there, from individualbehavior and population dynamics to communities? composition and flows ofmatter and energy, and from local to landscape scales.Nowadays cropland and lands for livestock farming represent about 40% ofthe ice-free land area and the transformation of natural habitats to modernagricultural landscapes occurs at unprecedented rates in the context of theexponential human population growth. Because of their role as top-predators,raptors are particularly sensitive to major ecosystem changes and thus couldbehave as good bioindicators of agricultural change. Here we summarizeexamples of negative and positive effects of the expansion and intensification ofagriculture and livestock farming on diurnal birds of prey in the late twentiethand early twenty-first centuries.Despite some positive effects on particular species, agriculture and livestockfarming practices are actually a threat for around 83% of the bird of prey speciesthat are Near Threatened or have some degree of global threat according to theIUCN. This suggests that agricultural activities are among the main factorsdriving raptor species toward extinction.To preserve the actual diversity of birds of prey, several aspects of agriculturalproduction including landscape modification, pesticide and veterinary drugsuse, and the assessment of potential conflicts of raptors and productive systemswill have to be carefully reviewed. Proper and specific management andconservation measures will have to be incorporated to agricultural productivesystem to integrate the conservation of their raptor communities.