Global Hotspots of Conflict Risk between Food Security and Biodiversity Conservation

This work contributes to the Belmont Forum/FACCE-JPI DEVIL project (grant number NE/M021327/1), and AM is supported by a BBSRC EastBio Studentship (http://www.eastscotbiodtp.ac.uk/). The Conservation Biology Institute are acknowledged for provision of data as well as BirdLife International, IUCN, NatureServe, and USGS for their contribution of the species range map data used in producing data available from the Biodiversity Mapping website (http://biodiversitymapping.org).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

A Bird Survey of Gunung Lumut Protection Forest, East Kalimantan and a Recommendation for its Designation as an Important Bird Area - Part 1

We report on a bird survey in and near Gunung Lumut Protection Forest in East Kalimantan, and evaluate our results against the BirdLife International criteria for recognition as an Important Bird Area. Five globally threatened species (Storm 's Stork Ciconia stormi, Bomean Peacock-pheasant Polyplectron schleiermacheri, Large Green Pigeon Treron capellei, Short-toed Coucal Centropus rectunguis and Blue-headed Pitta Pitta baudii) were encountered, as well as 91 species endemic to the Sundaic Lowland Forest biome, and up to 1% of the biogeographic population of the congregatory Storm's Stork. Based on these observations, we recommend Gunung Lumut Protection Forest to be included in Birdlife International 's Important Bird Area network

Inventario de avifauna del norte de Entre Ríos, Argentina: registros notables y perspectivas de conservación

Biodiversity inventories remain fundamental tools for biodiversity conservation. Neotropical biota has poor faunal inventories. In Argentina, the avifauna of the province of Entre Ríos is still not well known. Here, we present the first exhaustive bird inventory of Northern Entre Ríos. We recorded 317 bird species. Three species were new for the province of Entre Ríos and eight were new for Northern Entre Ríos. We recorded 17 threatened species, 4 biome-restricted species and two restricted range species. The high bird diversity of Northern Entre Ríos contrasts with the lack of effective reserves to ensure the survival of endangered species. Creation of natural reserves in this area is urgent. These protected areas should have a management plan and stable park rangers assigned, to ensure the protection of the avian diversity of Northern Entre Ríos.Los inventarios de Biodiversidad siguen siendo herramientas fundamentales para la conservación de la biodiversidad. La biota neotropical posee inventarios incompletos de fauna. En Argentina, la avifauna de la provincia de Entre Ríos permanece poco estudiada. Presentamos el primer inventario exhaustivo de aves para el norte de Entre Ríos. Registramos 317 especies de aves, tres son nuevas para la provincia de Entre Ríos y ocho son nuevas para el norte de Entre Ríos. Diecisiete especies están consideradas amenazadas, 4 son especies restringidas a un bioma y dos especies son de rango restringido. La alta diversidad de aves del norte de Entre Ríos contrasta con la falta de reservas efectivas que puedan asegurar la supervivencia de las especies amenazadas. La creación de reservas naturales en esta región es urgente. Estas áreas protegidas deberían tener planes de manejo y guardaparques estables asignados, para asegurar la protección de la diversidad de aves del norte de Entre Ríos.Fil: Dardanelli, Sebastián. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Buenos Aires Norte. Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Delta del Paraná; ArgentinaFil: Reales, César Fabricio. Provincia de Entre Ríos. Centro de Investigaciones Científicas y Transferencia de Tecnología a la Producción. Universidad Autónoma de Entre Ríos. Centro de Investigaciones Científicas y Transferencia de Tecnología a la Producción. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Centro de Investigaciones Científicas y Transferencia de Tecnología a la Producción; ArgentinaFil: Sarquis, Juan Andrés. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Limnología "Dr. Raúl A. Ringuelet". Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo. Instituto de Limnología; Argentin

Birds and people in Europe

At a regional scale, species richness and human population size are frequently positively correlated across space. Such patterns may arise because both species richness and human density increase with energy availability. If the species-energy relationship is generated through the 'more individuals' hypothesis, then the prediction is that areas with high human densities will also support greater numbers of individuals from other taxa. We use the unique data available for the breeding birds in Europe to test this prediction. Overall regional densities of bird species are higher in areas with more people; species of conservation concern exhibit the same pattern. Avian density also increases faster with human density than does avian biomass, indicating that areas with a higher human density have a higher proportion of small-bodied individuals. The analyses also underline the low numbers of breeding birds in Europe relative to humans, with a median of just three individual birds per person, and 4 g of bird for every kilogram of human

An Evaluation of Marine Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas in the Context of Spatial Conservation Prioritization

Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBAs) are sites identified as globally important for bird species conservation. Marine IBAs are one of the few comprehensive multi-species datasets available for the marine environment, and their use in conservation planning will likely increase as countries race to protect 10% of their territorial waters by 2020. We tested 15 planning scenarios for Australia's Exclusive Economic Zone to guide best practice on integrating marine IBAs into spatial conservation prioritization. We found prioritizations based solely on habitat protection failed to protect IBAs, and prioritizations based solely on IBAs similarly failed to meet basic levels of habitat representation. Further, treating all marine IBAs as irreplaceable sites produced the most inefficient plans in terms of ecological representativeness and protection equality. Our analyses suggest that marine spatial planners who wish to use IBAs treat them like any other conservation feature by assigning them a specific protection target

Ruddy Shelduck Tadorna ferruginea home range and habitat use during the non-breeding season in Assam, India

India is an important non-breeding ground for migratory waterfowl in the Central Asian Flyway. Millions of birds visit wedands across the country, yet information on their distribution, abundance, and use of resources is rudimentary at best. Limited information suggests that populations of several species of migratory ducks are declining due to encroachment of wedand habitats largely by agriculture and industry. The development of conservation strategies is stymied by a lack of ecological information on these species. We conducted a preliminary assessment of the home range and habitat use of Ruddy Shelduck Tadornaferruginea in the northeast Indian state of Assam. Seven Ruddy Shelducks were fitted with solar-powered Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite transmitters, and were tracked on a daily basis during the winter of 2009-2010. Locations from all seven were used to describe habitat use, while locations from four were used to quantify their home range, as the other three had too few locations (<30) for home range estimation. A Brownian Bridge Movement Model (BBMM), used to estimate home ranges, found that the Ruddy Shelduck had an average core use area (i.e. the contour defining 50% of positions) of 40 km 2 (range = 22-87 km2) and an average home range (95% contour) of 610 km2 (range = 222-1,550 km2). Resource Selection Functions (RSF), used to describe habitat use, showed that the birds frequented riverine wetlands more than expected, occurred on grasslands and shrublands in proportion to their availability, and avoided woods and cropland habitats. The core use areas for three individuals (75%) were on the Brahmaputra River, indicating their preference for riverine habitats. Management and protection of riverine habitats and nearby grasslands may benefit conservation efforts for the Ruddy Shelduck and waterfowl species that share these habitats during the non-breeding seaso

The PHPA/BirdLife International -Indonesia Programme: Goals and Approaches

The PHPA/BirdLife-Indonesia Programme (IP) is a collaborative conservation programme between the Ministry of Forestry, Directorate General of Forest Protection and Nature Conservation (PHPA) and BirdLife International, formalised in an Agreement approved by the Secretariat Kabinet, Republic of Indonesia, This paper provides a brief digest of the goals, structure, approaches and activities of the programme

Habitat conversion and global avian biodiversity loss

The magnitude of the impacts of human activities on global biodiversity has been documented at several organizational levels. However, although there have been numerous studies of the effects of local-scale changes in land use (e.g. logging) on the abundance of groups of organisms, broader continental or global-scale analyses addressing the same basic issues remain largely wanting. None the less, changing patterns of land use, associated with the appropriation of increasing proportions of net primary productivity by the human population, seem likely not simply to have reduced the diversity of life, but also to have reduced the carrying capacity of the environment in terms of the numbers of other organisms that it can sustain. Here, we estimate the size of the existing global breeding bird population, and then make a first approximation as to how much this has been modified as a consequence of land-use changes wrought by human activities. Summing numbers across different land-use classes gives a best current estimate of a global population of less than 100 billion breeding bird individuals. Applying the same methodology to estimates of original land-use distributions suggests that conservatively this may represent a loss of between a fifth and a quarter of pre-agricultural bird numbers. This loss is shared across a range of temperate and tropical land-use types

PRELIMINARY BASELINE SURVEY OF AVIFAUNAL DIVERSITY IN JIMMA ZONE, SOUTH-WESTERN ETHIOPIA

Multidimensional poverty, which is deeply-rooted within least-developed African countries like Ethiopia, is forcing local people to heavily rely on natural resources for their subsistent livelihoods. As a result, remaining wilderness areas in tropical Africa which support huge but little known biological diversity, are subject to extensive habitat loss, fragmentation and degradation in turn causing loss of plant and animal species and ecosystem services provided by them. Coffee forest fragment within the Jimma Zone of Ethiopia cannot be expected to be an exception to such scenario. Taking this persistent problem into consideration, we carried out a preliminary survey of bird biodiversity in selected areas of Jimma Zone during a short term bird ringing training held from Sept. 30 to Oct. 20, 2008. The main objective of the survey was to identify and document bird species of Jimma Zone, Southwestern Ethiopia, for further in-debth ornithological studies. Survey data were collected through exhaustive observations in and around 10 coffee forest fragments in Garuke, one fragment in Eladale, one urban area site in Jimma town and in scrubland vegetation around Gilgel Ghibe hydropower reservoir, Jimma Zone, Southwestern Ethiopia. In addition, five mist-nets were employed to capture understory forest birds in two purposively selected coffee forest fragments. Mist nets were opened at 5:50 A.M. and checked every 30 minutes until they were closed at 12:00 A.M. Over 196 bird species were identified during this survey and of these, 41 individuals belonging to 20 species were captured in Garuke and 23 individuals of 9 bird species in Eladale. Montane white-eye (Zosterops poliogastrus) followed by Olive sunbird (Nectarinia olivacea), Abyssinian slaty-flycatcher (Melaenornis chocolatinus) and Rupell&#x2019;s robinchat (Cossypha semirufa) were the most frequently captured bird species. Of the sites surveyed, Gilgel Ghibe hydropower reservoir had strikingly highest bird species diversity. We approached the reservoir almost in a constant site near Bulbul Kebele (the smallest administrative unit in Ethiopia) and recorded over 115 bird species within about 300 meters distance! We learnt that this area was an important and most appropriate site to see a number of migrant and resident species as well as to undertake future bird ringing activities. We believe that the result of this survey will contribute much for the preparation of a comprehensive bird species checklist for Jimma Zone that could serve as important baseline information for more focused future ornithological investigations in the area so as to promote bird conservation through ecotourism activities and improve the livelihood of local people