Authors: Valkó, Orsolya; Borza, Sándor;Godó, Laura;Végvári, Zsolt;Deák, Balázs;

Large birds, such as cranes are involved in human-wildlife conflicts as they often forage in croplands. The Eurasian crane (Grus grus) is a large iconic bird species, protected across Europe, which, thanks to conservation programs and its ability to utilize croplands for foraging, shows a strongly increasing population trend. This exaggerates the already existing conflicts between farmers and cranes spilling over to natural habitats, where foraging by large flocks can lead to land degradation. Here we evaluated the effect of biopedturbation by cranes on the vegetation of dry grasslands in Hungary. We used indicators of vegetation naturalness, forage quality and floral resource provision to evaluate the ecosystem state from multiple aspects. We sampled 100 quadrats in disturbed patches and 100 in intact grasslands in two seasons and two years (800 observations). We found that cranes created distinct early-successional habitat patches characterised by increased the plant diversity and floral resources compared to intact grasslands. Although crane-disturbed patches could provide forage for livestock early in the season, the forage quality became poor later in the year. Given the increase of the global crane population, monitoring the disturbed areas, and developing a complex prevention and mitigation strategy is important.