Wildlife Conservation on Farmland. Managing for Nature on Lowland Farms. Edited by David W. Macdonald and Ruth E. Feber. © Oxford University Press 2015. Published 2015 by Oxford University Press. CHAPTER 8 Landscape-scale conservation of farmland moths Thomas Merckx and David W. Macdonald 8.1 Scope of agri-environment schemes Biodiversity has declined substantially throughout much of the European wider countryside. The most promising tools to reverse these declines are widely thought to be agri-environment schemes (AES) (Don- ald and Evans 2006). These governmental schemes provide inancial rewards for ‘environmentally friendly’ methods of farmland management. However, AES do not always produce signiicant biodiversity beneits (Kleijn et al. 2006; Batáry et al. 2010). For ex- ample, in the UK, the broad and shallow ‘Entry Level Stewardship’ has often been unrewarding for wildlife (e.g. Davey et al. 2010, but see Baker et al. 2012), but, in many cases, the more targeted ‘higher level’ scheme has exceeded expectations (Jeremy Thomas, pers. comm.). Indeed, there is great scope for inventively designed AES to make a large impact on biodiversity conservation in regions where intensive agriculture has a dominant footprint; AES can be implemented over enormous areas of land and this matters because intensive agriculture is one of the main drivers of bio- diversity declines worldwide (Donald et al. 2001; Ben- ton et al. 2002; Green et al. 2005). Globally, farmland covers about half of the poten- tially useable land (Tilman et al. 2001) with farmed crops feeding, dressing and, increasingly, fuelling the growing human population. However, land conver- sion to farming has brought destruction, degradation, and fragmentation of habitats, landscape homogeniza- tion, and pollution. It has not only destroyed the eco- systems converted to farmland, but often also reduced the ecosystem services (such as crop pollination, pest control, water retention, and soil protection) provided by the adjoining non-farmed land. Nevertheless, some biodiversity of the original ecosystems may be re- tained within farmland ecosystems, its amount heavily dependent on the spatial extent and degree of farm- land intensiication. Indeed, although species typic- ally ‘prefer’ one ecosystem, they often occur in, and use resources from, neighbouring ecosystems (Pereira and Daily 2006; Dennis 2010). As such, many species may manage to persist within farmland systems, with at least some of them, such as the speckled wood Pa- rarge aegeria, originally a woodland butterly, adapting to these ‘novel’ ecosystems (Merckx et al. 2003). As a result, extensively farmed systems can often be char- acterized by lourishing biodiversity (e.g. chalk grass- lands, the Iberian dehesa/montado); hence farmland, in general, has the potential to support biodiversity (Chapter 7, this volume), and all the more so when fos- tered by effective AES (Whittingham 2011). Launched during the late 1980s, AES were conceived to reverse the severe declines in farmland biodiver- sity that were wrought by the techno-boom of agri- cultural intensiication. They relected a societal desire to restore biodiversity to farmland, and also, increas- ingly, recognition of the economic value of the eco- system services they provide (Macdonald and Smith 1991). However, given that they are inanced through tax-payers’ money, it is essential to ensure AES are effective in delivering their goals (Kleijn et al. 2006; Macdonald et al. 2000, 2007). This could potentially be improved in a number of ways: for example, in regions When through the old oak forest I am gone, Let me not wander in a barren dream John Keats, On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again.