Increases in subsistence farming due to land reform have negligible impact on bird communities in Zimbabwe.

ABSTRACT: Habitat alterations resulting from land-use change are major drivers of global biodiversity losses. In Africa, these threats are especially severe. For instance, demand to convert land into agricultural uses is leading to increasing areas of drylands in southern and central Africa being transformed for agriculture. In Zimbabwe, a land reform programme provided an opportunity to study the biodiversity response to abrupt habitat modification in part of a 91,000 ha dryland area of semi-natural savannah used since 1930 for low-level cattle ranching. Small-scale subsistence farms were created during 2001-2002 in 65,000 ha of this area, with ranching continuing in the remaining unchanged area. We measured the compositions of bird communities in farmed and ranched land over 8 years, commencing on

SUBMITTER: Pringle S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8840882 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature