Of Birds, People (and Coffee): Research and Conservation in Costa Rica

Abstract

I am a wildlife veterinarian and currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Georgia’s (UGA) Odum School of Ecology. Years ago, I was fortunate enough to collaborate with an ecologist on a study on tapirs (Tapirus bairdii) in a stretch of lowland rainforest in Costa Rica. That opened up a world for me and set me on a path towards my current professional passion: to merge veterinary medicine with an ecological perspective, in particular towards applied conservation. However, I felt I was missing the tools to truly take the host-pathogen interactions I had learned in veterinary school to the population, community, or landscape level, which an advanced ecology degree could offer. The general theme of my dissertation work revolves around how human-altered landscapes affect disease dynamics. In specific, I am investigating how shade-grown coffee plantations influence the biodiversity, abundance, and health of wild birds. Shadegrown coffee (or ‘‘bird-friendly’’ coffee) is a method by which forest either is never cleared and coffee bushes are planted in between existing trees or previously cleared coffee plots are replanted with native trees. Traditional coffee plantations are monoculture operations that clear large areas of forest and replace them with coffee. This requires generous amounts of fertilizers and pesticides, because coffee is originally an understory, shade-loving plant, heavily stressed under the sun; however, it makes harvesting a lot easier. Shade-grown coffee works well in small plantations, and studies have shown that avian biodiversity is much improved in these operations, which is important in areas in Central America where neotropical migrants are running out of available habitat. These plantations also act as points of contact between forest birds and humans and their domestic animals (including free-roaming chickens), and I am particularly interested in the balance of benefits and potential problems these plantations create for wild birds. I have worked as an exotic animal and zoo veterinarian and have been an avid bird-watcher all my life, but working with wild birds in the field has given me the opportunity to really see them in their element and appreciate the issues that threaten free-ranging birds worldwide.