The TLinks project aims to enhance the success of biodiversity conservation through the restoration of species-rich communities on ex-arable land. The soil and its biotic complexity are usually overlooked in strategies for biodiversity conservation. However, successful biodiversity conservation depends on the functioning of the whole ecosystem, and particularly on the restoration of linkages between organisms in different trophic groups.

The project uses a range of existing biodiversity restoration sites in case study areas across Europe to identify environmental and socio-economic criteria associated with successful and failed restoration schemes. Manipulative field experiments are being used to identify methods for enhancing successful restoration. Indicators for assessing the degree of success of such measures are being identified in order to develop the most effective and sustainable strategies for nature conservation.

A review of indicators currently used to assess the suitability of sites for biodiversity restoration, or the success of management aimed at enhancing biodiversity, confirmed our belief that these are poorly developed and focus largely on botanical characteristics. Soil fertility is sometimes used as an indicator of restoration potential. However, we discovered that certain soil biota are more strongly correlated with restoration success than soil chemistry.

Often the enhancement of biological diversity is constrained by the poor dispersal ability of organisms. This is especially true for habitats that have been subject to fragmentation, including many of those listed in the Habitats Directive. We found that even in restoration sites adjacent to the best remnant patches of habitat, colonization by above-ground taxa can be limited, as it most certainly is for the soil biota. Whether this is the result of poor dispersal or the slow development of appropriate soil characteristics at the restoration site is still unclear and further research is needed.

Dispersal limitation can be overcome for some groups, most notably plant species, by seed sowing. Sowing high diversity seed mixes increased the likelihood of successful outcomes (high weed suppression, high diversity of associated invertebrate groups). In addition, our novel experiments have shown that the genotype of seed material used for restoration schemes affects the outcome, with seed from local populations in similar habitats performing best.

Many of Europe's most threatened habitats are the product of traditional agricultural systems. Implementation of the commitment made at the Gothenburg Council to ‘halt the loss of biodiversity by 2010' involves conservation of existing areas of such habitats and expansion of their area. Biodiversity can be conserved and restored by returning agricultural land to extensive and traditional forms of land management. Such restoration is funded through Agri-Environment Schemes (EU Reg. 2078/92), with 20% of European farmland subject to management in such schemes. It is therefore important that we are able to manage such land optimally.

The main contribution of TLinks to biodiversity conservation is to solve the major current problems in the targeting of suitable restoration sites by supplying criteria, indicators that increase predictability of success and methods that effectively enhance biodiversity, in particular, the all important biotic linkages above and below ground.

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