Reduced diversity of farmland birds in homogenized agricultural landscape: A cross-border comparison over the former Iron Curtain

Culture in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) is often characterized as isolated from that of the West, with artists locked behind the Iron Curtain, having no opportunities to interact directly with global trends. While this may be true to a great extent for the general population, we should not close our eyes to the actual cross-border movements of artists and art forms that did take place in that regime. Many producers of artistic texts interacted with the West—not just well-known writers and theater directors like Christa Wolf or Bruno Besson, but also rock bands. Indeed, a few privileged GDR bands, belonging to the group of Reisekader (travel functionaries) were granted permission to travel to the West. An analysis of their interactions with their domestic audiences and with audiences in the West gives a more nuanced view regarding the nature of cultural globalization that continues into the 21st century, and provides insights into the role of cultural industries in cultural and political change today. The story of these bands contributes to our knowledge on how GDR authorities were unable to perceive and manage cultural creativity in an era of networked, flexible, and relatively autonomous creators.

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A small mammal’s map: identifying and improving the large-scale and cross-border habitat connectivity for the hazel dormouse Muscardinus avellanarius in a fragmented agricultural landscape

Biodiversity and Conservation ◽

10.1007/s10531-018-1515-0 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 27 (8) ◽

pp. 1891-1904 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Markus Dietz ◽

Sven Büchner ◽

Jessica Hillen ◽

Björn Schulz

Keyword(s):

Large Scale ◽

Agricultural Landscape ◽

Habitat Connectivity ◽

Cross Border ◽

Hazel Dormouse ◽

Muscardinus Avellanarius

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The Slovenian-Hungarian Border: A Historical Outline

Acta Ethnographica Hungarica ◽

10.1556/022.2020.00014 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 65 (2) ◽

pp. 333-354

Author(s):

Katalin Munda Hirnök ◽

Ingrid Slavec Gradišnik

Keyword(s):

Border Region ◽

Iron Curtain ◽

The European Union ◽

Physical Strength ◽

Political Actors ◽

East European ◽

Cross Border ◽

Historical Outline ◽

Social Dynamic ◽

The Great War

The article presents the facts relating to a century of shifting borders along the frontier between today’s Slovenia and Hungary. As borders primarily symbolize the physical strength of the state, they are an essential subject for people living in borderlands anywhere in the world. Following the Great War, the 1919 delineation of borders in what had for centuries been a stable area (Slovenian March) caused upheaval not only for political actors but also for those persons who suddenly found themselves living in separate states. Later in 1948, the border became part of the Iron Curtain, which completely paralyzed communications in the Yugoslavian (Slovenian)-Hungarian cross-border region and branded it with a highly specific historical and social dynamic. The turn of the 1980s to the 1990s was marked by the fall of the Iron Curtain between the East-European (communist) and Western (capitalist) worlds. After 2004 and 2007, when the Slovenian and Hungarian states became first members of the European Union and then the Schengen area, it seemed that the border would fade away.

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Rural landscape dynamics over time and its consequences for habitat preference patterns of the grey partridge Perdix perdix

PLoS ONE ◽

10.1371/journal.pone.0255483 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 16 (8) ◽

pp. e0255483

Author(s):

Sabine Marlene Hille ◽

Eva Maria Schöll ◽

Stéphanie Schai-Braun

Keyword(s):

Agricultural Landscape ◽

Habitat Preferences ◽

Bird Species ◽

Agricultural Practices ◽

Rural Landscape ◽

Landscape Changes ◽

Farmland Birds ◽

Perdix Perdix ◽

Grey Partridge ◽

Over Time

Intensification of agricultural practices has drastically shaped farmland landscapes and generally caused a decline in spatial and temporal heterogeneity, thus leading to changes in habitat quality and food resources and a decline for most farmland birds Europe-wide. The relationship between complex landscape changes and habitat preferences of animals still remains poorly understood. Particularly, temporal and spatial changes in diversity may affect not only habitat choice but also population sizes. To answer that question, we have looked into a severely declining typical farmland bird species, the grey partridge Perdix perdix in a diverse farmland landscape near Vienna to investigate the specific habitat preferences in respect to the change of agricultural landscape over two decades and geographic scales. Using a dataset collected over 7.64 km² and between 2001 and 2017 around Vienna, we calculated Chesson’s electivity index to study the partridge’s change of habitat selection over time on two scales and between winter and spring in 2017. Although the farmland landscape underwent an ongoing diversification over the two decades, the grey partridges declined in numbers and shifted habitat use to less diverse habitats. During covey period in winter, partridges preferred also human infrastructure reservoirs such as roads and used more diverse areas with smaller fields than during breeding where they selected harvested fields but surprisingly, avoided hedges, fallow land and greening. Known as best partridge habitats, those structures when inappropriately managed might rather function as predator reservoirs. The avoidance behaviour may further be a consequence of increasing landscape structuring and edge effects by civilisation constructions. Besides, the loss in size and quality of partridge farmland is altered by crop choice and pesticides reducing plant and insect food. With declining breeding pairs, the grey partridge does not seem to adjust to these unsustainable landscape changes and farmland practices.

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Operation Pollinator: Positive Action for Pollinators and Improved Biodiversity on Farm

Outlooks on Pest Management ◽

10.1564/v31_jun_07 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 31 (3) ◽

pp. 121-125

Author(s):

Peter Sutton

Keyword(s):

Ecosystem Services ◽

Agricultural Landscape ◽

Sustainable Intensification ◽

Farmland Birds ◽

Positive Action ◽

Farm Scale ◽

Public Money ◽

The Uk ◽

On Farm ◽

Selection Of

Operation Pollinator is an industry led initiative. This biodiversity enhancement programme has enabled better engagement and training of farmers in the delivery of high quality wildlife habitats as part of their national agri-environment schemes (AES). This overview presents findings from farm-scale studies that have shown the type and scale of effects required to deliver such benefits on farm and across the landscape. Significant efforts have already been made to promote biodiversity on farmland, but these results show that to improve the agricultural landscape really, we need to implement more of the best options so as to achieve the scale required to underpin the delivery of ecosystem services. The UK is still transitioning from the old Agricultural Policy Scheme (CAP) scheme, and so it will still be possible to use this type of off-crop mitigation to protect wildlife and ecosystem services in future AES, and this strategy has been described as using "public money for public goods" or "payment for ecosystem services. The EU has proposed that farmers manage 5–7% of the landscape in this way and field margins are a critical mechanism for such farmland biodiversity programmes. The results presented are from a selection of farm scale studies (i.e. with plots of 40 ha – 100 ha) that were large enough to provide indications of the scale of implementation required as targeted AES measures to benefit both farmland birds and pollinators. This review is based on an earlier paper that was presented at a conference on "Sustainable Intensification" organised by the Association of Applied Biologists in 2016. Ref: Aspects of Applied Biology 136, 2017 Sustainable Intensification p120–129 Operation Pollinator: Positive action for pollinators and improved biodiversity in arable landscapes, Peter Sutton, Geoff Coates, Belinda Bailey, Marek Nowakowski, Mike Edwards, Robin Blake, Ben Woodcock, Claire Carvell & Richard Pywell.

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