Building Blocks or Stumbling Blocks? Landscape ecology and farm-level participation in agri-environmental policy

The rapidly maturing field of landscape ecology presents a highly relevant framework for the future development of agri-environmental policy (AEP) instruments. At present there are two critical flaws in AEP instruments when seen from a landscape-ecological perspective: (i) the agreements are struck through voluntary agreements, and (ii) their limited targeting means that some sites/elements which are important to the landscape mosaic may fall outside the conservation estate. The site-in-context approach of landscape ecology is proposed as an appropriate conceptual framework to match the scale and pattern of landscape change with appropriately defined and scaled multiple-farm management agreements.