When a tree falls in the forest, you can still hear the birdsong

On a cold and humid early morning in March, two fowl surveyors stood in the dim forests of Kenaboi Point out Park in Malaysia, straining their ears for birdsong. From exactly where they stood, they observed towering rainforest trees and thick undergrowth beside deserted logging trails.

The park, which had been selectively logged practically four a long time in the past, experienced experienced most of its matured trees taken out. Biodiversity experienced suffered then. But when the surveyors noticed the warm flash of the orange-bellied flowerpecker (Dicaeum trigonostigma), and listened to the nasal tunes of the minor spiderhunter (Arachnothera longirostra), and or else recorded extra than 1,000 individual birds in their two-thirty day period review, they understood the forest was recovering.

This kind of disturbed rainforests are prevalent across Malaysia, where less than condition regulation, stretches of after-pristine forest can be marked for timber manufacturing, selectively logged, and permitted to recover all over again. But this tactic, nevertheless extra sustainable than clear-reducing in idea, has found troubles in follow.

Once selective logging requires area, production forests are labeled as degraded somewhat than virgin forests, which also would make it additional legally permissible for corporations to distinct and change their land for other utilizes. Recovering forests have been lower down to make way for oil palm plantations, agricultural land and professional tree plantations.

Kenaboi State Park, once a production forest but now underneath security, is an anomaly, but also a glimpse of the biodiversity Malaysia’s disturbed forests can keep if authorized to recuperate effectively. The researchers, whose research was released in Global Ecology and Conservation, counted 1,068 birds from 111 species for the duration of 60 sampling periods in the park.

Sharifah Nur Atikah and Muhammad Syafiq Yahya, each Ph.D. students at Universiti Putra Malaysia, frequented 30 sampling factors after in March, then once once more in April 2018, for 10 minutes each individual time. They listened to and noticed common birds including different forms of flowerpeckers, cuckoos and ground babblers.

There were being rarer species way too: the luminously feathered and near-threatened inexperienced broadbill (Calyptomena viridis), the susceptible rhinoceros hornbill (Buceros rhinoceros), and extra. “Even after logging, disturbed tropical rainforest still provide as critical habitats for a massive proportion of forest birds together with all those species with significant conservation values,” they wrote in their paper.

The research also identified forest and biodiversity restoration procedures could be even further speeded up with the correct post-harvest methods, these kinds of as leaving a lot more dead trees in the forest.

“Normally, we don’t do direct intervention administration on the vegetation structure just after logging,” said Badrul Azhar, corresponding writer of the review, tropical ecologist and senior lecturer at Universiti Putra Malaysia. “People just leave the area, leave it to mom character to get started the restoration procedure.”

But the researchers, who also investigated the effect of distinct internet site-amount characteristics (these as proportion of canopy go over and selection of shrubs) on fowl biodiversity in their examine, discovered the amount of fallen and standing dead trees to be notably influential.

“Our data suggest the importance of useless trees,” very first writer Atikah claimed in an email. “Some chook groups had been observed to be affiliated with the availability of dead trees as they could deliver ideal nesting websites … these useless trees ought to be retained as they could provide as an significant habitat element for forest biodiversity.”

Kenaboi State Park, previous logged in the 1980s and declared a condition wildlife park in 2008, has not found its bird biodiversity return to ranges recorded in major forests. “It’s been pretty much 40 decades, but avian biodiversity [may] still be 25% poorer in comparison with major forests,” Azhar stated.

“The very clear-cutting program is a lot worse than selective logging, but this shows we have to have to refine our selective logging procedure and uncover means to decrease the influence on biodiversity,” he additional.

Malaysia has dropped 29% of its tree go over since 2000, knowledge from World-wide Forest Enjoy exhibit. Some 18% of its full forested region is shielded nowadays, with certified logging authorized in the remaining 82%. As the local weather disaster intensifies, preserving Malaysia’s diminishing forests, which act as carbon sinks, is witnessed as vital to meeting the country’s world-wide environmental commitments.

When allowed to recuperate, selectively logged forests like Kenaboi State Park can not only get back their biodiversity, but also add ecotourism profits to the point out, Azhar mentioned.

“It’s superior time to change our concentrate from logging revenues to other resources of cash flow,” he explained. “Rather than turning creation forests into plantations, it is better to up grade them to secured places or national parks.”

Banner graphic of Rhinoceros Hornbill (Buceros rhinoceros). Image courtesy of Muhammad Syafiq Yahya.

Quotation:

Atikah, S. N., Yahya, M. S., Norhisham, A. R., Kamarudin, N., Sanusi, R. & Azhar, B. (2021) Effects of vegetation framework on avian biodiversity in a selectively logged hill dipterocarp forest. World wide Ecology and Conservation, 28. doi:10.1016/j.gecco.2021.e01660

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