The avifauna of a naturally regenerating secondary forest, Pangani, North-Eastern Tanzania

Abstract

As humans modify native ecosystems with increasing frequency, natural habitats including forests are lost. Under such circumstances, secondary forests can increasingly be important to conservation of biodiversity at landscape scales. However, in East Africa, little is known about avian community composition in regenerating secondary forests. In this study, avian diversity of a regenerating secondary forest was assessed in Pangani, northeastern Tanzania, using point counts. Sixty point counts were conducted for a duration of 12 days in about 90 ha of the regenerating secondary forest. Thirty species were found to utilise the regenerating secondary forest, of which 12 are categorized as forest-dependent species, and 12 were forest visitors. Using the same sampling effort in the adjoining riverine forest, there were 42 bird species, of which 11 and 13 were forest-dependent species and forest visitors, respectively. These results suggest that the regenerating secondary forest provided a habitat for a number of bird species including forest-dependent species and a few intra-African migrants, and it is thus of conservation value, at least at a local scale. Maintaining such regenerating secondary forests can provide greater landscape connectivity for the survival and, possibly, dispersal of birds.