Missing the target? A critical view on butterfly
conservation efforts on calcareous grasslands
in south-western Germany
Filz KJ, Engler JO, Weitzel M, Schmitt T. (2013): Missing the target? butterfly conservation efforts on calcareous grasslands in south-western Germany. Biodiversity Conservation 22: 2223-2241. IF 2.192, Q1
Butterflies are strongly declining in grassland habitats of Central Europe. In light of that, the success of conservation is controversially discussed. Through our published paper, we compared the changes in butterfly diversity and community structure on six managed calcareous grasslands with eight unmanaged vineyard fallows. Both habitats had strong losses of species diversity and remarkable shifts of community composition, with changes in the vineyard fallows only slightly more severe yet more stochastic than the calcareous grasslands. Therefore, conservation measures on calcareous grasslands only partly achieved their goal to maintain the high species diversity and functional complexity and thus, we argued that management on conservation sites can buffer against these effects but is not sufficient for full compensation.
