Maximising the benefits to arable biodiversity from the effective targeting of agri-environment schemes

摘要

Environmental Stewardship (ES) builds on the experience of previous schemesbringing new opportunities to enhance arable biodiversity within the Englishcountryside. Environmental Stewardship is divided into two parts, the basicpoints-based Entry Level Scheme (ELS) and the discretionary and competitiveHigher Level Scheme (HLS). HLS follows the pattern of the earlier CountrysideStewardship Scheme and is aimed at delivering targets for Biodiversity,Landscape, Access, Natural Resource Protection and the Historic Environment.The prescriptions in the scheme have been shown to work and deliver for bothcommon and rare arable features. Current approaches to HLS targeting need to berefined, if we are to deliver the biodiversity objective of ES within the currenteconomic climate.