ABSTRACT
The conservation of agricultural habitats has become an integral part of agricultural policy within both the EC and the UK. Payments to farmers for following environmental guidelines are in the form of management agreements associated with Sites of Special Scientific Interest (S8SI), Environmentally Sensitive Areas (ESAs), The Moor.. land Scheme and Countryside Stewardship and many other schemes. These payments are justified on the grounds that: the public values ecosystems which are associated with low-intensity grazing systems; farmers have property rights over land to the extent that they can modify the ecology; and modem agriculture has increased the rarity of some ecosystems to a level where their marginal public value is greater than their marginal conservation cost.
