Partial recovery of an African rainforest bird community 35 years after logging

Abstract

Tropical rainforests suffer from fragmentation and degradation, with consequences such as the decline of interior or most selective species. For this reason, researches have been undertaken to investigate the effects of these disturbance processes, with the possibility of developing appropriate restoration plans. This research aimed to study the bird community composition of a degraded forest 33 years after intensive logging occurred in 1968- 1969. Surveys were conducted in 2003-2006 by mist netting in the Kanyawara area in Kibale National Park (Uganda) and the results were compared to those obtained by previous research in 1991–1993 at the same site and in a contiguous primary forest. We found that the ratio between forest interior specialists and forest generalists was 1.79, an intermediate value between 1.03 and 2.17 found respectively in the logged and unlogged study sites in the earlier research. We therefore suggest that about 35 years after intensive logging, our study area has partially recuperated a bird community typical of a mature forest, even though a significant alteration, probably due to the incomplete recovery of all lost ecological niches, still remains.