Breeding in an agricultural landscape 247 Hortobágy National Park is involved in a species-focused


recovery programme that includes improving alkaline grasslands to attract pratincoles, although the habitat resto- ration seems to have been unsuccessful so far (Kovács & Kapocsi, 2004). Based on the results presented here, we believe that joint actions by conservationists and farmers are key (Kiss et al., 2018). Maintaining good relation- ships between farmers and conservationists is essential to achieving success in conservation projects (Logsdon et al., 2015; Homberger et al., 2017). Direct nest protection activ- ities had to be implemented mostly in row crops because these types of agricultural land (especially sunflower and corn fields) are cultivated intensively during the breeding season. By contrast, in spring cover crops and fallow lands (with a few exceptions), we observed no disturbance by agricultural machinery after ploughing or sowing. On a global scale, human activity can negatively influ-


ence the behaviour, productivity and nest survival of ground-nesting birds in various habitats, especially on farmland (Fahrig, 1997; Donald et al., 2001; Colwell, 2010; Ward et al., 2010). We have set ourselves the goal of habitat development at the local level, as a result of which 50–100 ha of fallow lands are created every year to facilitate the settlement of shorebirds on the Nagykunság rice systems. These empty fields are created through disc ploughing from the middle to the end of April, and after the treatment there is no human disturbance during the breeding season. These areas are small in relation to the size of the total habitat, but this seems to be a promising project as increasing numbers of birds have nested and gathered in these fallow areas in recent years. Improvements could be supported through the development of targeted agricultural programmes, which would set management standards specifically for the arable lands used by the species and financially support the conservation efforts of farmers. Our results suggest that direct conservation activities can


achieve desired outcomes even in intensively farmed agricultural habitats. Without such interventions, a large proportion of farmland bird nests could be destroyed by agricultural machinery. We believe that the Eurasian popu- lations of collared pratincoles are threatened considerably by anthropogenic pressures: for instance, even in their native breeding habitats the pratincoles are subject to adverse effects from climate change, pollution and an unnaturally high density of mesopredators. In addition to effective direct nest protection, it will be important to increase the proportion of safe fallow lands in the future as a specific agri-environmental protection measure, so that as many farmland birds as possible have the opportun- ity to choose this undisturbed agricultural habitat for breeding. As collared pratincoles nest in several places in artificial habitats across Europe, mainly close to wetlands such as rice fields, breeding habitats should be protected


or restored more widely to maintain biodiversity in agricul- tural landscapes.


Acknowledgements We thank Antal Széll, Miklós Lóránt and other national park rangers who participated in the conservation man- agement of the species and data collection in Hungary; Fanni Takács, who supported our field data collection; William Jones and Tamás Székely Jr for their linguistic corrections; the farmers of Kisújszállás and Karcag, especially the workers of Nagykun 2000, Hubai és Társa and Indián Rizs Agro, Inc., who supported the protection of the species in Hungary through their patience, positive attitude and help with field site management; and the hunters association for providing data on predator control. VK and TSz were supported by ÉLVONAL-KKP 126949 of the Hungarian government. TSz was also funded by the Eötvös Lóránd Research Network (Grant no. 1102207) and VK was also supported by Junior Star GAČR project (31-2307692M_Kubelka). We thank Project TetraClim for the use of ELKH Cloud for our analyses.


Author contributions Study design and fieldwork: ÁK, ÁM, IK, SzG, TSz; data analysis and writing: all authors.


Conflict of interest None.


Ethical standards This research abided by the Oryx guidelines on ethical standards.


Data availability The dataset is available in the Dryad data reposi- tory at doi.org/10.5061/dryad.mgqnk9959.


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Oryx, 2024, 58(2), 240–249 © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605323000911


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