On July 22nd, we won the Concytec ProCiencia contest that grants funding for the monitoring of avifauna within our forestry plantations with native species and BAM’s protected forests under our REDD+ The Last Habitat conservation project, in Campo Verde, Ucayali, Peru.
Did you know that Peru is among the 12 megadiverse countries and is positioned as the world leader with the greatest diversity of birds on the planet? (MINAM, 2024).
Details of the bird monitoring
This project will assess the composition of bird diversity as a function of forest structural variables as a basis for a better understanding and formulation of a theoretical framework of biodiversity: detailed measurement of bird community structure in one square kilometer plots in an incipient forest plantation, an advanced plantation and a natural forest in the central jungle and comparison with published data from an equivalent plot in a forest in southern Peru.
Summary of the project
One of the main challenges of tropical ecology with respect to biodiversity is to document and understand spatio-temporal patterns in communities of high diversity, such as in the Amazon. This is necessary, among others, to anticipate the consequences of human impact in these areas. It is fundamental in forest management, as well as in the current worrying scenario of global warming where changes in communities attributable to this small increase in the temperature of the environment have already been documented.
In this study, we propose the detailed measurement of bird communities in plots at the largest possible scale, but allowing the detail generally used only in smaller plots. The scale of sampling is based on an extraordinary and unprecedented intensive sampling effort on a 1 km2 plot by an elite bird identification group in 1983 in the heart of Manu. In 2019, with far more resources and tools at hand, the effort was repeated 36 years later by a team, including the technical lead and a co-investigator of this project and two authors of the original work, seeking mainly to answer temporal patterns of change, finding that the structure and composition of the birds changed little despite the time elapsed.
The same scale of 1 km2 plots will be used to complete the detailed description of three bird communities and analyze the differences in their composition and structure with respect to forest characteristics related to management: one plot in a recent forest plantation (less than 5 years old), one about 10 years old and one in a mature forest.
With this intensive and detailed survey, answers to community ecology questions can be addressed, such as: does the population structure follow basic principles applicable to the three treatments? In this forest growth succession, can a progression be determined?
Executing entities
The research will be conducted on the BAM farm in Ucayali together with Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina, California State University Long Beach University, USA and Casper College, Wyoming (USA).
More about our Campo Verde property
BAM’s private property in Campo Verde, located 45 minutes from the city of Pucallpa, protects +25,000 hectares where we develop a forest conservation project called REDD+ The Last Habitat and a restoration and reforestation project with native species such as the marupa and the shihuahuaco.
Our REDD+ The Last Habitat, developed on +20,000 ha of protected megadiverse forests, indirectly benefits +835 families from surrounding communities, and protects +600 extraordinary species, some endangered and vulnerable, such as the jaguar, the sachavaca and the maquisapa monkey. Within the area, we can find +5,000 ha of wetlands (“aguajales”): one of the ecosystems with the highest carbon sequestration capacity in the world.
Learn more about how you can join us in our mission to protect the Peruvian Amazon! Contact us at info@bosques-amazonicos.com
BAM, private investment for a sustainable world.
By: Valeria Drinot y Walter Wust
