Authors: Markova-Nenova, Nonka; Engler, Jan Oliver;Wätzold, Frank;Cord, Anna;

Result-based payments (RBP) can improve the cost-effectiveness of agri-environment schemes (AES), but are rarely applied due to a major difficulty: substantial monitoring costs. Within the CAP, so far RBP have been implemented mainly for the conservation of indicator plant species in grassland. Bioacoustics and information technology provide a promising opportunity for extending RBP to wildlife species, such as birds. We compare monitoring costs of RBP for bird conservation in agriculture using either human observation or audiomoths (the least-cost bioacoustics devices on the market) in combination with machine learning using different cost scenarios for the status-quo and future technological development.