A comparison of wintering duck numbers among European riceproduction areas with contrasting flooding regimes

International audienceAgricultural lands can provide suitable habitat for birds under some conditions. In particular, waterfowlsometimes rely on ricefields as nocturnal foraging habitat during winter if post-harvest practices makefood accessible. To assess whether the winter flooding of ricefields could be a major driver of duck regionalabundance in Europe, we relied on a combination of spatial and temporal analyses. In the former, fiveof the most important western European rice growing regions in Spain, Italy and France were comparedin terms of habitat composition over the 2002–2012 period. The relative importance of natural wetlandsand ricefields (either dry or flooded) in determining the abundance of wintering ducks was then established.In the second approach, the trends in duck numbers before and after implementation of winter-flooding Agri-Environment Schemes (AES) were compared in two of the study regions. Bothapproaches highlighted the role of winter ricefield flooding in explaining wintering duck numbers andcomplementing the natural wetlands; flooding harvested ricefields improves habitat attractiveness byenhancing food resource accessibility. In Europe, the proportion of ricefields flooded during winter variesconsiderably between countries (0.17–62%), owing to differences in policy initiatives such as Agri-Environment Schemes. Promoting such schemes more widely across the European rice production areacould make a big difference in terms of waterfowl habitat quality at the scale of their wintering range