Grassland Management for Insect Conservation: Restoration

Abstract

‘Grassland restoration aims to recover the diversity and ecosystem services that grasslands provide’ (Blair et al. 2014). Those aims include native insects themselves (diversity) and services such as pollination, to which they are central contributors, with the major purpose of rendering altered grassland more akin to their unaltered ‘natural’ states. Restorations and reconstructions that are integrated into the wider landscape context may be more successful than isolated restoration patches, as Shepherd and Debinski (2005a, b) found for prairie butterflies in Iowa. Their more integrated restoration patches developed richer butterfly assemblages than isolated patches, and more resembled assemblages on remnant prairie fragments. Study of a wider array of arthropods, although these were analysed only to family level, implied that outcomes from prairie restoration efforts could approximate native remnant communities present (Orlofske et al. 2011), and also supported the values of integrated restoration planning. Sound ecological understanding should underpin any restoration anticipated, or translocation/re-introduction exercise, for a given insect species, with wider requirements for conservation of more diverse communities. Site preparations can be complex, necessitating modifications of topography (Morris et al. 1994) and vegetation, as well as assuring supply of all other critical resources. More broadly, as Morris et al. commented ‘management of grassland in reserves or protected areas is (or should be) a series of subtle and finely-tuned processes’ that allow for persistence of many species.