The eider conservation paradox in Tautra—a new contribution to the multidimensionality of the agricultural landscapes in Europe

The seabird Common eider (Somateria mollissima L.) is a characteristic and relatively common bird along the Scandinavian coasts. It has had a crucial economic importance for human coastal communities since prehistory as a source of animal protein, egg and down but this utilisation has ceased today. Due to continuous decline in eider populations in the island of Tautra off the Norwegian west coast from the late 1970s and onwards a number of conservation measures were implemented here to halt this development and the results are yet to be seen. This paper presents the conservation of declining eider populations in Tautra as a case study of conservation challenges in agricultural landscapes, and illustrates the complex interconnections of human use of biological resources and habitat shaping within the context of a subsistence agroecosystem. It contributes new data and perspectives on the challenge to conserve dimensions of biological diversity that have been shaped and developed within previous and lost agroecosystems and economic contexts. The current paper shows the hazard of focussing conservation measures on only one dimension of biodiversity without incorporating other dimensions like the human management of other habitats which had important functions for the development of habitats for the target biodiversity component in the pre-industrial agroecosystem. Successful biodiversity conservation in agricultural landscapes demands involvement of the historical aspect of resource use to understand the ecological dynamics of habitats and populations. Further, since the biodiversity and ecological dynamics of one habitat are interrelated to other habitats, it is necessary to include the landscape mosaic with different habitats in the conservation efforts and programmes.