Abstract
The Sinharaja rainforest in southwestern Sri Lanka is a protected forest in a largely agriculture-dominated landscape. In keeping with global UNESCO global biosphere reserves planning, the Sinharaja is surrounded by a buffer zone of regenerating forest and villages with small tea plots and multi-strata tree gardens (homegardens). Globally, however, conservation planning lacks standards on buffer zone management. We ask what relationships exist between village land use and bird assemblages, which are effective ecosystem indicators. Birds have been little studied across land use and vegetation structure in actively managed, large, protected forest buffer zones. To that end, we ran spatially- and temporally-replicated bird point counts across tree gardens, forest fragments, and tea plots within a Sinharaja village. Tree gardens held a greater abundance of birds across habitat association, conservation concern, diet, and endemic species than forest fragments or tea plots. Forest fragments and tree gardens hosted statistically similar numbers of birds in some subsets, but their species assemblages differed. In tea plots, greater shade tree species richness correlated with greater bird abundance and species richness. Our results support the argument for programs to support complex small-scale tree-based agroforestry embedded in buffer zone regenerating forest.
Highlights
Geological isolation and varied climate and topography produced the unique species assemblages of Sri Lanka, as in other parts of south Asia (Ripley and Beehler, 1990; Bossuyt, 2004; Kaluthota and Kotagama, 2005; Kotagama et al, 2006; Sodhi et al, 2009; Wikramanayake and Buthpitiya, 2017)
Bird abundance and Shannon-Weiner diversity were higher in tree gardens than in forest fragments or tea plots (Figure 2) [F(2,30) = 20.79, p < 0.001] (Kruskal-Wallis chi-square = 16.39, df = 2, p < 0.001); and bird species richness was higher in forest fragments than in tea plots [F(2,30) = 22.16, p < 0.001]
Species assemblages differed between forest fragments, tree gardens, and tea plots
Summary
Geological isolation and varied climate and topography produced the unique species assemblages of Sri Lanka, as in other parts of south Asia (Ripley and Beehler, 1990; Bossuyt, 2004; Kaluthota and Kotagama, 2005; Kotagama et al, 2006; Sodhi et al, 2009; Wikramanayake and Buthpitiya, 2017). Twenty-seven of Sri Lanka’s observed birds are confirmed endemic and an additional six are proposed endemic (Warakagoda et al, 2013; Iucn., 2016). Formerly largely forested, Sri Lanka has lost half its forest cover since 1930 (Naresa., 1991; Reddy et al, 2018). The loss in keeping with that of much of South Asia, which lost almost 30% of forest cover in the same period (Reddy et al, 2018). Reflecting Sri Lanka’s large-scale forest cover and habitat loss, seventeen of the island’s endemic birds are vulnerable, near threatened, or endangered (Warakagoda et al, 2013; Iucn., 2016; Abeyarama and Seneviratne, 2017). The Sinharaja rainforest, a National Park, UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Reserve, UNESCO World
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