Recovering lost hay meadows: An overview of floodplain-meadow restoration projects in England and Wales

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Abstract

Restoration of natural habitats plays an important role in nature conservation. After 30 years of efforts to restore species-rich floodplain meadows, most of which had been lost to alternative land uses during the preceding half century, the extent and level of restoration success in the UK remained unknown. Athree-yearsurvey of floodplain meadow-restoration projects across England and Waleswas completed from 2016to2018. Itallowed evaluation of restoration progress on 163 sites nationwide.

Restoration success was measured by floristic composition, species richness and balance of functional types in plant communities. To identify factors affecting restoration success, their state prior to restoration, restoration technique, site ownership and quality of ongoing management were analysed. The survey revealed that 25 % of restoration sites demonstrated expected success, achieved mainly by private landowners. Restoration failed or showed very poor progress on another 15 % of sites, managed predominantly by public or charitable organisations. The remaining sixty percent of the sites showed some signs of improvement. The degree of restoration success showed no significant correlation to the state of the site prior to restoration, or to the restoration method applied. Ownership of the site and site management both influenced restoration success. The degree of success appeared to depend on the consistency and sufficiency of the restoration management.

Introduction

Many northern European floodplains have been occupied by semi-natural meadows for most of the last millennium. These diverse communities established under long-term consistent management for hay balancing the nutrient input from floods. These meadows developed as sustainable ecosystems, highly valued for animal feed over many centuries (McGinlay, Gowing, & Budds, 2016; Schaich, Karier, & Konold, 2011). More than 97 % of these habitats were lost from the floodplains of Europe during the period 1930–1990 (e.g. Fuller, 1987; Krause, Culmsee, Wesche, Bergmeier, & Leuschner, 2011), and to a lesser extent in the following years (Jefferson, Smith, & MacKintosh, 2014, Chp 3). Moist or wet, mesotrophic to eutrophic hay meadows (Eunis habitat type E2.14 and E3.4a, EEA 2019) are classed as Endangered in the European Red List of habitats (Janssen et al., 2016) and the importance of floodplain meadow restoration has been recently acknowledged globally by the European Environment Agency (2016) and United Nations Environment Programme (2019). Floodplain meadows are increasingly recognised for the range of ecosystem services they offer (Lawson et al., 2018), and their loss has prompted the initiation of many projects aiming to re-create and restore them (e.g., Vinther & Hald, 2001; Hölzel & Otte, 2003).

Globally, habitat restoration processes have become so widespread that ecosystem restoration targets were set by the United Nation Environment Programme (2019). The increasing number of restoration projects creates a need for critical evaluation of the processes affecting them (Jones, Barber, & Gibson, 2019). In the UK, some positive outcomes have been reported for particular floodplain meadow sites in England (e.g., Woodcock, McDonald, & Pywell, 2011; Hosie, Jones, Rothero, & Wallace, 2019) and Wales (Shellswell & Squire, 2019). However, estimation of restoration extent and progress on floodplain meadows at a national scale has never been previously attempted. A three-year nationwide survey was initiated in the UK by the Floodplain Meadows Partnership (FMP; www.floodplainmeadows.org) in 2016 (Rothero & Tatarenko, 2018). Over three years, 177 restoration sites were visited in 20 counties across England and Wales, representing 844 ha of floodplain. Seventeen sites where restoration projects were about to start were also visited. Sixty seven percent of the surveyed sites were entered into an agri-environment scheme. This UK government funded scheme (known as Countryside Stewardship) provides financial incentives for farmers, land owners or managers to maintain and improve the environment (Rural Payments Agency, 2020).

Restoration methods have varied over the past 30 years of floodplain-meadow restoration in England and Wales. The most common method in the last ten years has been the application of freshly cut herbage (Kiehl, Kirmer, Donath, Rasran, & Hölzel, 2010), colloquially referred to as “green hay,” taken from an existing species-rich meadow. “Green hay” refers to species-rich herbage from a donor site that is transferred to the restoration site on the same day it was cut (Edwards et al., 2007; Kirkham, Bhogal, Chambers., Dunn, & Tallowin, 2012). However, other methods are also used including sowing commercial seed mixtures, reverting permanent pastures to a regime of hay cutting, application of seed mixtures collected from existing species-rich meadows by hand, often with the help of volunteers, along with planting plug plants. In this survey, botanical data were collected on each site, together with information about historical and current management and restoration techniques, in order to explore the degree of success of restoration projects. Measuring success or even monitoring progress of restoration projects is a challenge, because there is no definitive approach (Kimball et al., 2015). Vegetation structure, species diversity, species abundance, presence of target species and functioning of ecological processes are commonly used (Ruiz-Jaen & Aide, 2005). In the UK, the success of restoration sites involved in agri-environment schemes is measured by both species’ richness (as number of species per 1 m2), and by frequency of particular indicator species selected from targeted plant communities (Natural England, 2012, 2016). Assessing the similarity of a restored community to a target community has rarely been undertaken. In the UK, targets for floodplain-meadow restoration have focussed on the rare, species-rich Sanguisorba officinalis-Alopecurus pratensis (MG4) grassland and the Cynosurus cristatus-Caltha palustris grassland (MG8) as defined by the British National Vegetation Classification (NVC) (Rodwell, 1992). The match between the vegetation on a restored site and a target community can be measured by calculating a similarity coefficient (Czekanowski, 1913; Malloch, 1996.) This degree of similarity was applied here as the first criterion of restoration success. Apart from the similarity in floristic composition, a restored community is expected to mirror the functionality of the target community. The C-S-R system of describing plant functional types (Grime, 1974) has been successfully used to compare vegetation samples which differed in management regime (Hunt et al., 2004). The C-S-R signature (Hunt et al., 2004), was used as the second criterion in our calculation of restoration success. The combination of these two criteria together with species richness, as a general indicator of biodiversity, were adopted to produce a robust scale of restoration success.

As the success of a project is defined by its results, so assessments of project management are usually based on the achievements of pre-set goals and objectives (Hockings, Stolton, Leverington, Dudley, & Courrau, 2006). For example, the management of restoration sites in agri-environment schemes is assessed by the presence of indicator species in the sward (Natural England, 2012). The spectrum of methods that have been used to assess the management of protected areas is broad in scale and the degree to which the criteria are formalised is broad too (Stoll-Kleemann, 2010.) However, the role of management in restoration projects has rarely been discussed (e.g. Guerrin, 2015). The socio-economic component of management is even more rarely considered because of the variability of management approaches, especially in the private sector, the lack of records of management activities, and the poor structure and ambiguity of questionnaires collecting management data (McGinlay et al., 2016). Restoration projects are expected to be managed in accordance with restoration guidelines and advice (e.g., Natural England, 2012). However, the dynamic nature of floodplain environments, e.g. variation in soil nutrients (Klaus, Sintermann, Kleinebecker, & Holzel, 2011) and flooding regime, brings additional challenges for restoration managers. Our approach seeks to explore whether management traits, such as consistency, sufficiency and adaptability help to explain the trajectory of restored vegetation.

Our survey combined information from a diversity of landowners and restoration approaches, with other factors, such as the condition of the site prior to restoration to evaluate variation in the effectiveness of restoration.

Within this paper, we aim to address two questions:

How close are we to restoring lost hay meadows on British floodplains?

Has a particular habitat restoration approach proven successful?

Our second question gave rise to four separate hypotheses:

  • -

    Restoration success is a function of site ownership

  • -

    Restoration success depends on the restoration technique used

  • -

    Restoration success depends on site condition prior to restoration

  • -

    Restoration success correlates with the consistency, sufficiency or adaptiveness of management

Section snippets

Identifying restoration locations

The diversity of organisations, landowners and other bodies involved in floodplain-meadow restoration projects in the UK is extensive, but their identification was made feasible by using the network already developed by the Floodplain Meadows Partnership (FMP) A layered approach was used to identify them:

  • Data supplied under licence from the Government adviser for the natural environment in England, Natural England (Natural England, n.d.), was entered into a Geographic Information System (QGIS

Theory and calculations

In order to estimate restoration success, we summed measures of species richness, similarity to target community and functional diversity.

To evaluate characteristics of restoration management (management factors), questionnaire responses were scored against criteria set out below.

Extent of floodplain-meadow restoration across the UK

Data collected from 163 restoration sites in 20 counties across England and Wales (Table 3) representing 733 ha of floodplain grassland, were included in the data analysis. 70 % of restoration projects started between 2006 and 2015, 12 % occurred during 1990s, and 6 % in the period 2000−2005. Some decline in the number of new restoration projects was observed in recent years. Restoration projects were found in most of the major river floodplains in England, most notably the Thames, Severn,

Spatial extent of floodplain meadow restoration

Restoration of semi-natural habitats, especially those which declined in the 20th century due to agricultural intensification, was thought to be an effective way of bringing them back (e.g., Wells, Pywell, & Welch, 1994). There are 2980 ha of species rich floodplain meadows remaining in England and Wales (Rothero et al., 2016). The 844 ha represented by restoration sites described here would extend these rare plant communities by 28 % if successful, which would be a substantial contribution to

Conclusions

From a survey of 163 field sites, neither the restoration method nor the previous land use was found to affect restoration success in floodplain-meadow schemes. However, the category of ownership did influence the outcome, with schemes managed by private landowners being the most successful.

The aspect of a management regime that appeared to have the strongest correlation with success was a set of actions we classified as “sufficiency.” This aspect was a measure of the care and diligence taken

Declaration of interest

None.

Funding sources

The survey activities and data analyses were undertaken by the Floodplain Meadows Partnership team, funded by the John Ellerman Foundation. The John Ellerman Foundation is a philanthropic trust who fund work in part relating to conservation activity in the UK. They had no part in the study design, report writing, data analysis or paper production/submission. They funded staff time to undertake data collection and landowner interviews, resulting in the production of a report to the funder about

Acknowledgements

All farmers and managers of the restoration sites for their kind permission to access their fields and for sharing their knowledge. Richard Jefferson, Andy Cooke and George Hinton (Natural England) for their help in supplying data. Mike Dodd (The Open University) for help with fieldwork and data analysis. Hilary Wallace (Ecological Surveys Bangor) for help with fieldwork and interpretation of NVC data. Richard Jefferson, Mike Dodd and Hilary Wallace for their inputs into deriving a scale of

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