The relevance of urban agroforestry and urban remnant forest for avian diversity in a densely-populated developing country: The case of Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Abstract

Urban green spaces can contribute to conserve some of the original avian diversity in urbanized landscapes. However, the relative contribution of urban agriculture vs. urban forest remnants to the preservation of the avifauna in large cities, particularly in developing countries in the tropics, remains poorly documented. We assessed bird assemblages in the densely-populated capital city of Port-au-Prince in Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world. From early January to late April 2018, 10 censuses per site were conducted in 16 urban green sites, consisting of 8 unexploited, private forest patches and 8 agroforestry plantations, embedded within the urban landscape and ranging in size between 1 and 11 ha. Overall, 32 and 34 different bird species were recorded in forest patches and agroforestry sites, respectively, including two endemic species listed as vulnerable by IUCN, Corvus leucognaphalus and Amazona ventralis. There was a large overlap (85 %) in the composition of avian assemblages between urban agroforest sites and urban forest remnants. However, pairwise compositional dissimilarity increased with increasing distance between sites. Finally, both species richness and diversity in the 16 sites were negatively correlated with the percentage of built habitat in a 500-m radius around each site. We discuss our results in relation to the importance of small urban green spaces in countries suffering from high levels of deforestation and severe poverty.