The Environmental Benefits of Conservation Headlands in Cereal Fields

Abstract

The cereal ecosystem is still the most important habitat for lowland gamebirds in Britain. Species such as pheasants and partridges, and indeed many other species of plants and animals, are known to thrive in cereal ecosystems throughout Britain, Northern Europe and North America if they are sympathetically managed. Techniques are now available to overcome the adverse effects of herbicides and insecticides on gamebird chicks and on a variety of species in the cereal ecosystem, among both its flora and its fauna. The basic approach has been to exclude pesticides selectively from the outermost six metres of the cereal crop, adjacent to the field boundary, a practice which has become known as Conservation Headlands. This article describes these techniques and charts their achievements to date.