Green treasures: Investigating the biodiversity potential of equine yards through the presence and quality of landscape features in the Netherlands

Discussion As the need for action to halt biodiversity loss becomes ever more urgent, previously over- looked sectors such as equestrianism [20, 24], are needed to contribute towards the restoration of ecosystem services. Our results emphasise the contribution that equine yards make towards promoting biodiversity and restoring ecosystem functions with an average property coverage of 9.08% (commercial yards) and 12.33% (private yards) for two-dimensional landscape fea- tures. These values already exceed the targets originally set out by the European Commission [17], and do not even consider the presence of trees on properties. Equine yards also tend to have a diverse number of LFs, with on average ten different features present on both commer- cial and private yards. These findings demonstrate that there are yards which manage to Fig 1. Percentage Property Coverage (PPC) of commercial vs. private yards. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0301168.g001 Fig 2. Percentage of commercial and private yards featuring an N number of LFs. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0301168.g002 PLOS ONE Biodiversity potential of equine yards through landscape features PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0301168 April 11, 2024 8 / 16