Abstract
The conversion of natural, or seminatural, habitats to agricultural land and changes in agricultural land use are significant drivers of biodiversity loss. Within the context of land‐sharing versus land‐sparing debates, large‐scale commercial agriculture is known to be detrimental to biodiversity, but the effects of small‐scale subsistence farming on biodiversity are disputed. This poses a problem for sustainable land‐use management in the Global South, where approximately 30% of farmland is small‐scale. Following a rapid land redistribution program in Zimbabwe, we evaluated changes in avian biodiversity by examining richness, abundance, and functional diversity.Rapid land redistribution has, in the near term, resulted in increased avian abundance in newly farmed areas containing miombo woodland and open habitat. Conversion of seminatural ranched land to small‐scale farms had a negative impact on larger‐bodied birds, but species richness increased, and birds in some feeding guilds maintained or increased abundance. We found evidence that land‐use change caused a shift in the functional traits of the communities present. However, functional analyses may not have adequately reflected the trait filtering effect of land redistribution on large species.Whether newly farmed landscapes in Zimbabwe can deliver multiple benefits in terms of food production and habitat for biodiversity in the longer term is an open question. When managing agricultural land transitions, relying on taxonomic measures of diversity, or abundance‐weighted measures of function diversity, may obscure important information. If the value of smallholder‐farmed land for birds is to be maintained or improved, it will be essential to ensure that a wide array of habitat types is retained alongside efforts to reduce hunting and persecution of large bird species.
Highlights
A fundamental driver of global biodiversity loss is the conversion of natural habitats to agriculture (Hooper et al, 2012; Vié et al, 2009)
Taxonomic measures of bird species richness and diversity were not lower in areas transformed from ranched to farmed land
On the con‐ trary, many measured statistics increased with land transformation, indicating that numerous species and several functional groups have benefited, a few have not
Summary
A fundamental driver of global biodiversity loss is the conversion of natural habitats to agriculture (Hooper et al, 2012; Vié et al, 2009). Partial trade‐off analyses that provide support for land sparing ignore real‐ world complexity in terms of the scale or type of farming undertaken (for instance, smallholder‐farmed landscapes form the backbone of global food security (Samberg, Gerber, Ramankutty, Herrero, & West, 2016)) These analyses fail to account for regional vari‐ ations in how agriculture expands and the associated implications for persistence of biodiversity (Fischer et al, 2014; Tscharntke et al, 2012). This restricts our ability to determine trade‐offs in the re‐ lationship between food production and biodiversity conservation (Tscharntke et al, 2012). We test the hypotheses that: (a) the redistribution of land results in decreased avian species richness and diversity; (b) the redistribution of land results in a decline in large‐bodied species; and (c) changes in (a) and (b) will be reflected in a shift in the func‐ tional traits of communities present
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