By Herp News
A black Kite flies over burned forest in Ghana. Photo by Nicole Arcilla. Thousands of studies have measured the impact of logging on tropical biodiversity, but few have looked at illegal logging. This, despite the fact that illegal logging represents anywhere from 50 to 90 percent of total timber harvesting in tropical countries, according to the United Nations Environment Program. But new research in Ghana’s highly-biodiverse Upper Guinean rainforests has found that a combination of illegal and legal logging has taken a tremendous toll on birds. The researchers, headed by Nicole Arcilla, a postdoctorate researcher with Drexel’s College of Arts and Sciences, found understory bird abundance fell by more than half in just 15 years. “The numbers don’t lie and they don’t have a political agenda. These numbers are shocking,” said Arcilla, whose paper was published in Biological Conservation. Understory birds are species that live primarily between the canopy and the forest floor, largely feeding on insects. The team collected data on these birds from 2008 to 2010 in forest heavily impacted by illegal logging, comparing them to previous data collected from 1993 to 1995. They found that during the fifteen-year gap, logging – both legal and illegal – increased by 600 percent, decimating the understory birds. “Whereas analysis based on data collected in 1993–1995 estimated a partial post-logging recovery of the understory bird community at that time, data from 2008–2010 showed no indication of post-logging recovery, likely due to ongoing illegal logging following intensive legal…
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