Agriwilding substantially restores butterfly and moth diversity in a European agricultural landscape
(2026) Biological Conservation — Vol. 321, p. 111965 (2026)
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- Abstract
- Agricultural intensification has caused widespread biodiversity loss, particularly among insects, highlighting the urgent need for strategies that restore biodiversity in human-dominated landscapes. Agriwilding-perennial polycultures that combine productive trees and shrubs with species-rich grasslands while allowing partial ecological succession-has been proposed as a nature-inclusive alternative to conventional agriculture, yet empirical evidence remains limited. We assessed the potential of agriwilding to restore Lepidoptera diversity in an agricultural landscape in Belgium. We combined long-term butterfly observations within a 2-ha agriwilding system following land-use conversion with later standardised surveys of butterflies and moths across different land-management types. Long-term butterfly observations indicate that the agriwilding site supported a high proportion of the regional species pool following land-use conversion. Community composition shifted from mobile generalists towards rarer species associated with woody vegetation, which coincided with ecological succession and increased structural complexity. Standardised monitoring revealed significantly higher butterfly and moth diversity in agriwilding than in conventional agriculture, and similar moth diversity to nature management systems within the study landscape. Overall, agriwilding showed higher species richness, abundance, Shannon diversity, and Hill numbers for both butterflies and moths. Furthermore, species composition differed substantially among all land-management types, showing that agriwilding supports many unique species. The findings from this case study highlight agriwilding as a promising approach for reconciling biodiversity conservation with productive land use and suggest that such multifunctional agricultural systems could be incorporated into biodiversity-focused policy frameworks.
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Debusscher, F., Van Den Eeckhaut, F., Baekeland, J., Van Dyck, H., Merckx, T., & Bossuyt, F. (2026). Agriwilding substantially restores butterfly and moth diversity in a European agricultural landscape. Biological Conservation, 321, 111965. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2026.111965 (Original work published 2026)