World’s most important bird forests

This video is called Wildlife of the Deep Congo Rainforest.

From BirdLife:

Global assessment identifies world’s most important wildlife forests

Thu, Dec 22, 2011

As the world tightens its economic belt, resources to address the world’s growing environmental problems are becoming increasingly limited. These reducing resources means the ability to establish the utmost conservation priorities is more important than ever to achieve the greatest returns for the investment.

In itself, it is right that conservation organizations do research about which areas are most important. However, they should not go along with the logic that “everyone”, including conservation, should supposedly “tighten their economic belts”.

Quite the contrary. Conservationists should argue that preserving the planet and its wildlife needs more money. Money, available from the defence destructive war budgets (the United States Air Force is the number one polluter in the world). And from the fat cat 1% or less of people profiting from the present unjust, ecologically disastrous, economic system.

A new paper published in the journal PLoS ONE by BirdLife scientists, identifies those forests that appear to be the most important for bird species, and are in most urgent need of conservation.

“The top three areas, according to our assessment are the forests of Hawaii; Palau in the Pacific; and the forests of the tropical African islands of São Tomé, Príncipe and Annobón”, said Dr Stuart Butchart, BirdLife’s Global Research and Indicators Coordinator. “Protecting these habitats is one of the 10 key actions identified by BirdLife to prevent further bird extinctions.”

The coastal and mountain forests of South America also scored particularly highly. Areas like the Amazon basin, which support large numbers of species, often scored lower because the species present there still have very large global ranges.

The authors of the report from BirdLife International and RSPB (BirdLife in the UK) used species distributions and forest cover from satellite imagery to estimate the contribution that 25 square-kilometre blocks of forest make toward conserving the world’s birds. By combining this information with rates of forest clearance (mainly logging), the most important forests for conservation were identified.

Around 6,000 species of the world’s birds (60%) are dependent to a considerable extent on forests, and some of these are the most threatened species on earth.

Graeme Buchanan from the RSPB said “More birds are dependent on forests than any other habitat. Our analysis makes an objective assessment of the importance of every patch of forest on the globe for birds. This is a particularly timely analysis, because the world’s governments have recently agreed to increase the global coverage of protected areas, through the Convention on Biodiversity. Legal protection is one method by which areas could be safeguarded, and our analysis is a contribution towards deciding where new protected areas would have the greatest impact.”

ScienceDaily (Jan. 19, 2012) — Native birds at Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge are in unprecedented trouble, according to a paper recently published in the journal PLoS ONE. The paper, titled “Changes in timing, duration, and symmetry of molt of Hawaiian forest birds,” was authored by University of Hawai’i at Mānoa Zoology Professor Leonard Freed and Cell and Molecular Biology Professor Rebecca Cann: here.

Protecting Hawaiian dry forests from invasive species and the risk of wildfire is an ongoing challenge for land managers and scientists conducting research on the Island of Hawaii. It is commonly thought that removing the invasive species and planting native species will restore the land to its original state. However, a recent article found that it is not quite that simple: here.