Implications for conservation management of hay meadows; cutting dates

The Action plan for hay meadows in Norway is an instrument used to manage hay meadows of high biological value. The mowing management is regulated by a specific date and we aimed to assess the suitability of this date. We compared proportions of mature plants of species associated with semi-natural grasslands at the defined mowing date in 2014 and 2015. Numbers of mature species differed between the two years, but even in the warmest year the percentage of mature plants was only 44%. In order to plan a more successful agri-environmental scheme, the cutting date should be more site-specific and based on knowledge of the former practices that originally created and maintained the biological values.