Are agri-environmental schemes doing their job? Evidence from Biebrza National Park, Poland

The Biebrza Valley is one of the largest wetland ecosystems in Central Europe to host species of convervation relevance, and features a strongly biocultural character. The semi-natural habitats that dominate its landscape have been developed as a result of centuries-long regimes of traditional grazing and haymaking. Starting in the 1960s, the gradual abandonment of traditional agriculture has threatened high nature value wetlands through secondary succession. Biebrza National Park (Biebrzański Park Narodowy) could not effectively counteract this process, and conservationists hoped that the system of subsidised agri-environmental schemes (AESs) would resume extensive management. Our goal was to find out whether the AES system is functioning as intended, supporting traditional extensive practices in the Biebrza Valley, whose role in proper wetland conservation has been acknowledged. To identify the impact of AESs on wetland management, we traced the implementation of a larger sample of AESs in the Biebrza Valley over the years using data from the Agency for Restructuring and Modernisation of Agriculture (ARiMR). We interviewed 28 local farmers and analysed whether the key traditional practices were integrated in the current management of 158 wetland plots, and what the variance of integration was among plots with different types of implemented AESs or no AES deployed. We found that AESs were implemented in the majority of the plots analysed, proving to be an important conservation and regulatory tool defining the management of semi-natural wetlands in the area. However, the AES system poorly integrated traditional practices, contributed to the abandonment of extensive grazing, and seemed to accelerate agricultural intensification in the area. The AES system fails to maintain a unique biocultural landscape, and the practices it supports may threaten the wetland ecosystem and its biodiversity in the long term. The system requires urgent revision and adaptation to local socio-ecological farming conditions.