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Contributed Talk

Session: : Conservation Ecology and Extinction 3

COS 213-4 - Forest degradation drives widespread avian habitat and population declines

Wednesday, August 9, 2023
4:15 PM – 4:30 PM PDT
Location: C125-126
Abstract: In many regions of the world, forest management has reduced old forest and simplified forest structure and composition. We

hypothesized that such forest degradation has resulted in long-term habitat loss for forest-associated bird species of eastern

Canada (130,017 km2) which, in turn, has caused bird-population declines. Despite little change in overall forest cover, we

found substantial reductions in old forest as a result of frequent clear-cutting and a broad-scale transformation to intensified

forestry. Back-cast species distribution models revealed that breeding habitat loss occurred for 66% of the 54 most common

species from 1985 to 2020 and was strongly associated with reduction in old age classes. Using a long-term, independent dataset,

we found that habitat amount predicted population size for 94% of species, and habitat loss was associated with population

declines for old-forest species. Forest degradation may therefore be a primary cause of biodiversity decline in managed

forest landscapes.