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Cattail Paludiculture Had Nearly Three Times the Modelled Bird Abundance of Drained Grassland

Common Reed Warbler (Acrocephalus scirpaceus) perched among reeds
Research · Ecology

Bird surveys at experimental cattail farms on rewetted peat in the Netherlands found much higher modelled bird abundance than on intensively managed drained grassland. The 2026 study compared Typha-based paludiculture—crop production with a raised water table—at 10 trial plots with nine natural wetland plots and nine agricultural grassland plots.

A point count is a survey in which observers remain at a fixed location for a set period and record birds seen or heard, allowing sites to be compared in a standardised way.

Across the 28 plots, researchers recorded 213 individual birds from 33 species during breeding-season point counts in May 2024. The model estimated 30.8 birds per hectare across all species in paludiculture, compared with 10.5 on grassland and 31.5 in natural wetland. The difference between paludiculture and grassland was significant, while the modelled abundance in paludiculture was comparable to natural wetland.

Wetland birds were nearly as abundant as in natural wetlands

Wetland-associated birds showed a similar pattern, with modelled abundance of 28.8 birds per hectare in paludiculture, 6.99 on grassland and 26.9 in natural wetland. Community composition in the cultivated wetlands fell between the two reference habitats rather than matching either one completely.

Common reed warbler (Acrocephalus scirpaceus) and sedge warbler (Acrocephalus schoenobaenus) were identified as indicator species of both paludiculture and natural wetland. Both occurred only in those two habitat types and were present at more than half of the surveyed sites. By contrast, mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) and Eurasian jackdaw (Coloeus monedula) were indicator species of grassland in this analysis.

Paludiculture did not replace the full wetland community

The authors note that the cattail sites did not reproduce the full wetland bird community: several rarer wetland specialists occurred only in natural wetlands, and some wetland specialists were less abundant in paludiculture. The surveys were also limited to one visit during the peak breeding season at relatively small experimental sites. Because the trial plots had been harvested during the preceding winter, the results describe bird use under that management regime. The authors point out that spring harvesting for fodder could overlap with breeding, whereas winter harvesting for fibre and insulation falls outside the breeding season.

Sources and image credit

  1. Copping, J. P., Waite, C. E., Balmford, A., Bradbury, R. B., van Duinen, G.-J. A., Finch, T., Mettrop, I. S., & Field, R. H. (2026). Typha-based paludiculture offers potential for greater bird species abundance and diversity than drained agricultural grassland. Ecological Solutions and Evidence, 7(1), e70169. https://doi.org/10.1002/2688-8319.70169Primary open-access research article first published 8 February 2026 under CC BY 4.0. Breeding bird point counts compared 10 Typha-paludiculture plots, nine natural wetland plots and nine agricultural grassland plots in the Netherlands. Model-fitted all-species abundance was 30.8 birds/ha in paludiculture, 10.5 in grassland and 31.5 in natural wetland. Common Reed Warbler and Sedge Warbler were indicator species of both paludiculture and wetland.

Image: Matthias Barby (Gollibolli) / Wikimedia Commons — common reed warbler (Acrocephalus scirpaceus), photographed 2 August 2010. Representative wetland species photograph, not a bird from the Dutch paludiculture surveys. Cropped from the original for the news-card format. · CC BY-SA 3.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ · Source

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