Grassland butterflies and low intensity farming in Europe

In this paper we describe the impact of the abandonment of traditional farming practices on butterflies and their habitats in traditional, often montane, pastoral systems. We link these declines to socioeconomic factors: illustrating how the failure of the CAP to support traditional farming leads to structural changes in farming enterprises—features which may be obscured by crude statistics on stock. We then call for the scheduled CAP reforms in...