Foodborne illness outbreaks have heightened pressures on growers to improve food safety, including mitigating possible threats from wildlife. Among wildlife, birds are particularly challenging to deter, and the risks they pose to pre‐harvest food safety remain unclear. Further, deterrence efforts can jeopardize conservation and biological control, necessitating strategies that effectively lead to co‐management of farmlands for conservation, pest control and pre‐harvest food safety. Promotion of birds of prey with nest boxes may be one promising strategy to promote species of conservation concern that can deter pest birds that damage crops and introduce foodborne pathogens. Here, we evaluate if the American kestrel ( Falco sparverius ), a small falcon, can concurrently reduce crop damage and pre‐harvest food safety risks from birds in sweet cherry orchards in Michigan, USA. In orchards with and without active kestrel nest boxes, we conducted avian transect surveys, estimated the percentage of cherries with bird damage and estimated the percentage of branches and cherries with faeces. We collected faecal samples directly from birds and crop surfaces. We tested faeces for Campylobacter , the most common foodborne pathogen in birds, using both culturing and PCR. Fewer birds were present in fields with nest boxes, which translated into reduced bird damage (0.47% vs 2.50%) and fewer branches with faeces (2.33% vs 6.88%). Faeces on individual cherries were rare (4/15,890 [0.025%] cherries across all sites). We detected one or more species of Campylobacter using culturing and/or PCR in 10.65% (33/310) of bird faeces collected from crops and in 19.67% (24/122) of samples collected directly from birds. Detection rates were similar in fields with and without nest boxes. Despite the somewhat high overall detection, cultivable Campylobacter were only detected in 0.97% of faeces collected from crops. Synthesis and applications . Pre‐harvest food safety and wildlife conservation are often thought to be in conflict, and produce growers have few tools to effectively manage birds. However, our findings suggest that the promotion of birds of prey using nest boxes may be one way for growers to conserve a declining species, reduce crop damage and reduce in‐field faecal contamination that could cause foodborne illness.

Wild birds can be serious pests on farms by damaging produce and introducing food safety hazards to production fields and packinghouses. The most serious crop damage is usually caused by fruit- or seed-eating species such as blackbirds, cardinals, robins, or crows, whereas other species such as sparrows, finches, and starlings can take up residence in farm buildings and quickly become a nuisance. Creating an effective management plan to deter wild birds from fields and buildings begins with correctly identifying bird species and the damage that they are likely to cause. Just as different kinds of pest insects target different plants at different times of the year, not all birds feed in the same way, nor at the same time. Targeting deterrence strategies toward specific species is more cost-effective than a “catch-all” approach and reduces the likelihood that nontarget species are affected. The most effective management plan will be targeted toward specific problem species at specific times of year and may involve mixing and matching different deterrence strategies.

Natural areas near farmland can provide refuge for birds that contribute to natural pest control. However, birds can endanger food safety by defecating on or near produce. Work in the western US suggests that Campylobacter spp. are the potential foodborne pathogens most commonly associated with wild birds and that pathogen prevalence is higher in landscapes dominated by animal agriculture. However, relatively little is known about other fresh-market-produce growing regions. Working on produce farms in the Southeastern US, we characterized bird communities, tested bird feces deposited on crop foliage for Campylobacter and Salmonella, and searched for landscape features associated with heightened bird-associated food safety risks. We found that bird communities on farms were generally similar across ecoregions. Campylobacter was never detected from bird feces deposited on crop foliage, but Salmonella was detected in 8.6% of fecal samples. Salmonella prevalence in crop-surface-collected bird feces was highest when farms also produced livestock and when wetland cover was prevalent in the landscape. Overall, our results suggest that on-farm livestock production may be an indicator of bird-associated food safety risks in the Southeast, as in the West. We suggest there may be some similarities, but important differences, in food safety risks posed by birds in different US produce growing regions.

Wild birds pose a difficult food safety risk to manage because they can avoid traditional wildlife mitigation strategies, such as fences. Birds often use agricultural fields and structures as foraging and nesting areas, which can lead to defecation on crops and subsequent transfer of foodborne pathogens. To assess the food safety risk associated with these events, wild bird feces were collected from produce fields across the southeastern United States during the 2021 and 2022 growing seasons. In total 773 fecal samples were collected from 45 farms across Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Tennessee, and 2.1% (n = 16) of samples were Salmonella-positive. Importantly, 75% of Salmonella were isolated from moist feces, showing reduced Salmonella viability when feces dry out. 16S microbiome analysis showed that presence of culturable Salmonella in moist feces correlated to a higher proportion of the Enterobacteriaceae family. From the Salmonella-positive samples, 62.5% (10/16) contained multi-serovar Salmonella populations. Overall, 13 serovars were detected, including six most commonly attributed to human illness (Enteriditis, Newport, Typhimurium, Infantis, Saintpaul, and Muenchen). PCR screening identified an additional 59 Salmonella-positive fecal samples, which were distributed across moist (n = 44) and dried feces (n = 15). On-farm point counts and molecular identification from fecal samples identified 57 bird species, including for 10 Salmonella-positive fecal samples. Overall, there was a low prevalence of Salmonella in fecal samples, especially in dried feces, and we found no evidence of Salmonella transmission to proximal foliage or produce. Fecal samples collected in farms close together shared highly related isolates by whole genome sequencing and also had highly similar Salmonella populations with comparable relative frequencies of the same serovars, suggesting the birds acquired Salmonella from a common source.

Fossil fuel infrastructure has important land-use impacts within the United States, including the environmental consequences of affected land that persists beyond the lifespan of wells. Here, we estimate the ecoregion-specific fifty-year present-value net benefits of restoring lands that are associated with non-producing wells in the conterminous United States on the basis of select ecosystem services—agricultural sales and carbon sequestration. We identify more than 430,000 restorable wells that occupy more than 800,000 ha of land. The present value of ecosystem services benefits was US$21 billion (2018) while the restoration costs were US$7 billion. Deciduous forests, grasslands and Mediterranean ecoregions had large net benefits, whereas arid and semi-arid regions were often negative. Focusing on select ecoregions of the United States would provide higher returns on investment in the form of environmental and economic benefits. Although our results suggest an ecoregional hierarchy, the restoration of all abandoned fossil fuel lands will have benefits at the local, regional and national scales, including food security, protection of biodiversity and restoration-related job opportunities.

Some insect populations are experiencing dramatic declines, endangering the crucial ecosystem services they provide. Yet, other populations appear robust, highlighting the need to better define patterns and underlying drivers of recent change in insect numbers. We examined abundance and biodiversity trends for North American butterflies using a unique citizen‐science dataset that has recorded observations of over 8 million butterflies across 456 species, 503 sites, nine ecoregions, and 26 years. Butterflies are a biodiverse group of pollinators, herbivores, and prey, making them useful bellwethers of environmental change. We found great heterogeneity in butterfly species’ abundance trends, aggregating near zero, but with a tendency toward decline. There was strong spatial clustering, however, into regions of increase, decrease, or relative stasis. Recent precipitation and temperature appeared to largely drive these patterns, with butterflies generally declining at increasingly dry and hot sites but increasing at relatively wet or cool sites. In contrast, landscape and butterfly trait predictors had little influence, though abundance trends were slightly more positive around urban areas. Consistent with varying responses by different species, no overall directional change in butterfly species richness or evenness was detected. Overall, a mosaic of butterfly decay and rebound hotspots appeared to largely reflect geographic variability in climate drivers. Ongoing controversy about insect declines might dissipate with a shift in focus to the causes of heterogeneous responses among taxa and sites, with climate change emerging as a key suspect when pollinator communities are broadly impacted.

Large mammal grazing is considered an important biological process that structures many grassland plant communities. While herbivorous arthropods are also important consumers in terrestrial systems, their interaction with large mammal grazing is poorly studied. We performed a field experiment in a tallgrass prairie manipulating arthropod abundance in both bison-grazed and ungrazed areas following a prescribed burn and monitored the plant community for 15 mo. Total plant biomass was unchanged by the end of the experiment, but individual biomass of forbs and grasses was altered by our manipulations. Forb biomass in the bison-grazed/arthropod-reduced plots was two to three times higher than other treatments, while grass biomass was higher in bison-grazed plots where arthropods were unmanipulated. Grass and forb richness showed smaller responses, with a significant difference only in ungrazed areas. Our results suggest that bison grazing and arthropod herbivory work in a complementary way; bison reduce grass biomass, allowing forbs to increase, while herbivorous arthropods reduce forb biomass, allowing grasses to increase. Our study showed that removing herbivorous arthropods may have lengthened the transition from forb to grass dominance, therefore delaying the return of conditions conducive to future disturbance by fire. Therefore, we argue that arthropod herbivory, interacting with large mammal grazing, is an additional important process affecting the plant community composition and disturbance patterns in tallgrass prairies and should be investigated further in additional grassland systems.

Recent reports of dramatic declines in insect abundance suggest grave consequences for global ecosystems and human society. Most evidence comes from Europe, however, leaving uncertainty about insect population trends worldwide. We used >5,300 time series for insects and other arthropods, collected over 4–36 years at monitoring sites representing 68 different natural and managed areas, to search for evidence of declines across the United States. Some taxa and sites showed decreases in abundance and diversity while others increased or were unchanged, yielding net abundance and biodiversity trends generally indistinguishable from zero. This lack of overall increase or decline was consistent across arthropod feeding groups and was similar for heavily disturbed versus relatively natural sites. The apparent robustness of US arthropod populations is reassuring. Yet, this result does not diminish the need for continued monitoring and could mask subtler changes in species composition that nonetheless endanger insect-provided ecosystem services.

We examined effects of the invasive speciesLespedeza cuneataon native plants and foliar arthropod communities in a tallgrass prairie. Through observational and manipulative experiments, we examined plant and arthropod responses toL.cuneataover one growing season. The observational study found little impact of the invasive plant on arthropods. By the end of the manipulative experiment, the combined biomass of native grasses and forbs was reduced by approximately 50% inLespedeza-present plots, while total arthropod numbers were only about 15% lower. Seasonal differences were evident;L.cuneata-absent plots showed lower arthropod numbers in May, but higher abundances in June. Some feeding groups, notably carnivorous arthropods, appeared unaffected byL.cuneata. We tested three hypotheses (one bottom-up and two top-down processes) to explain the relatively weak response of the arthropod community to the invasive plant. Nitrogen content of native plants adjacent toL.cuneataareas was significantly higher compared to plants more distant. Ground arthropod predators were higher during mid-summer inL.cuneataareas, which may partially explain seasonal variation in foliar arthropods. Insectivorous birds were unaffected byL.cuneataabundance, suggesting that arthropod predation rates by birds are unchanged. We suggest that whileL.cuneatahas strong effects on native plants, its ability to increase neighboring plant quality compensates for the lower biomass of native plants inL.cuneataareas, moderating the arthropod response. While management of this invasive species remains a priority, tallgrass prairie food webs may be partly resistant toL.cuneatainvasion.

Migrating animals are known to play an important role in nutrient transfer over short distances; however, this phenomenon has not been well studied for long-distance migrants. In this preliminary study, we focused on nitrogen (N) transfer by 44 bird species that migrate from Eurasia to two regions in sub-Saharan Africa that fall into the lowest 10% quantile of global N-deposition (mean annual deposition ≤ 10.44 mg/m 2 /year). We estimated the number of birds that die during the non-breeding season in these areas and then used N content and species-specific mass values to calculate annual N-deposition rates. For these two areas of low N-deposition, we found that bird mortality contributed 0.2 – 1.1% of total nitrogen deposition, which is a relatively small proportion. Therefore, we conclude that nitrogen transfer by long-distance bird migrants using the East Atlantic Flyway and the West Asian-East African Flyway currently has limited impact on the sub-Saharan nitrogen cycle. However, it is worth noting that this impact may have been more important in the past due to larger bird populations and lower background N-deposition (i.e., less anthropogenic impact).

Ecosystem engineers have important effects on abundance and diversity of organisms and are vital for conservation efforts. Some large mammalian grazers are engineers because their grazing activity radically changes plant community structure, an effect which then cascades to other consumers. Many large grazers also behaviorally modify the physical environment. American bison (Bison bison) are known for their wallowing, a behavior that creates distinct areas of high disturbance with modified biological and physical characteristics, but how this behavior affects other consumers is poorly understood. In this study, we investigated arthropod abundance and diversity patterns in active and abandoned wallows compared to those in surrounding tallgrass prairie. We found that active wallows contained lower arthropod abundance and diversity compared to surrounding prairie. Herbivorous arthropods were particularly affected and only about 50% as abundant in wallows, while carnivores and detritivores were affected similarly, but to a lesser degree. In contrast, abandoned wallows had higher arthropod abundance seasonally and higher species richness in several feeding groups. Because of arthropod differences in active and abandoned wallows compared to adjacent prairie, it appears that the impact of wallowing is dependent on time since occurrence, with long-term effects creating patches of higher arthropod abundance and richness. These patches are likely important, at least seasonally, for other consumers higher on the food web. Together with publications documenting positive effects of bison grazing on arthropod abundance and diversity, our results indicate that wallowing effects are potentially additive. These results suggest that physical changes caused by bison behavior are important for maintaining arthropod biodiversity of tallgrass prairies, and bison may therefore be valuable conservation tools. Bison have been proposed as important candidates for rewilding portions of North America, and our results suggest that they could indeed be valuable toward this end.