International: Identifying strategies to protect biodiversity in rapidly-developing southwest China: Songbird abundance and diversity in Tibetan sacred forests

University Of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI

Investigators

Abstract

This Doctoral Dissertation Enhancement Program award supports the field research in China of Ms. Jodi Brandt, whose objective is to identify effective strategies of conservation. The specific project will investigate how Tibetan sacred-forest patches, protected areas, contribute to biodiversity in a very important but highly-threatened biodiversity hotspot, the Himalayan Mountains of Southwest China. She will test the hypothesis that bird diversity and abundance are higher in the sacred forests than in the surrounding landscapes, and that the sacred forests are important keystone structures for the maintenance of regional biodiversity. The research will be performed in Northwest Yunnan Province. PhD student Brandt, under the direction of Dr. Volker Radeloff, will conduct the research in collaboration with two experienced Chinese ecologists, an ornithologist from the Southwest Forestry University and a botanist from the Shangri-la Alpine Botanical Garden. They will survey breeding-bird communities and bird habitat in sacred forests near Shangri-la City, the most developed and rapidly changing region in NW Yunnan. Despite the importance of NW Yunnan for regional avian biodiversity, no research has been done on forest songbirds in the study area. This research represents a foundational study to understand forest-bird habitat and distribution in this rapidly-changing region. It will explore critical ecological concepts in a unique and unstudied region. Acknowledging sacred areas as an important means to protect biodiversity could ensure their continued existence in the face of accelerating political, socioeconomic, and cultural change and may offer new avenues for conservation in other parts of the world.