Abstract
Tropical forest restoration initiatives are becoming more frequent worldwide in an effort to mitigate biodiversity loss and ecosystems degradation. However, there is little consensus on whether an active or a passive restoration strategy is more successful for recovering biodiversity because few studies make adequate comparisons. Furthermore, studies on animal responses to restoration are scarce compared to those on plants, and those that assess faunal recovery often focus on a single taxon, limiting the generalization of results. We assessed the success of active (native mixed-species plantations) and passive (natural regeneration) tropical cloud forest restoration strategies based on the responses of three animal taxa: amphibians, ants, and dung beetles. We compared community attributes of these three taxa in a 23-year-old active restoration forest, a 23-year-old passive restoration forest, a cattle pasture, and a mature forest, with emphasis on forest-specialist species. We also evaluated the relationship between faunal recovery and environmental variables. For all taxa, we found that recovery of species richness and composition were similar in active and passive restoration sites. However, recovery of forest specialists was enhanced through active restoration. For both forests under restoration, similarity in species composition of all faunal groups was 60–70% with respect to the reference ecosystem due to a replacement of generalist species by forest-specialist species. The recovery of faunal communities was mainly associated with canopy and leaf litter covers. We recommend implementing active restoration using mixed plantations of native tree species and, whenever possible, selecting sites close to mature forest to accelerate the recovery of tropical cloud forest biodiversity. As active restoration is more expensive than passive restoration, both strategies might be used in a complementary manner at the landscape level to compensate for high implementation costs.
Highlights
The practice of forest restoration is increasing worldwide, in an effort to mitigate the decline of biodiversity and ecosystem services caused by habitat degradation [1]
Total richness was significantly higher in passive restoration and in cattle pasture than in cloud forest, but did not vary between restored forests
Richness of forest specialists was significantly higher in the three forests than in cattle pasture, while richness of generalist species was significantly higher in cattle pasture compared to the other vegetation types (Fig 2B)
Summary
The practice of forest restoration is increasing worldwide, in an effort to mitigate the decline of biodiversity and ecosystem services caused by habitat degradation [1]. This global effort to recover degraded ecosystems reflects the declaration by the United Nations General Assembly of 2021–2030 as the “Decade on Ecosystem Restoration” [2]. Comparisons need to be made in sites where both restoration strategies have been implemented at the same time in the same landscape [7]. Studies using this approach represent
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