A successful bird monitoring program supported by Responsible Wood Community Grants and undertaken by Birdlife Australia at the request of PF Olsen Australia has dispelled the notion that forest plantations are ‘biological deserts’. Source: Timberbiz
In 2015, BirdLife Australia began monitoring bird populations annually in hardwood plantations in western Victoria and have done similar work in Western Australia since 2017. The Responsible Wood Community Grant project extended the scope of the monitoring program into softwood plantations in southern New South Wales.
In 2020, Birdlife Australia received $10,500 under the Responsible Wood 2020 Community Grants Program.
A total of 585 individual birds across 36 species were recorded across a spread of softwood plantations transects, control transects in the surrounding national parks and reserves and native remnants within the plantation matrix.
Using protocols established in western Victoria and Western Australia, four main indexes were reviewed – a Shannon index at both a landscape and site scale; the number birds in 14 foraging guilds; the number of conservation-significant bird species; and analysis of common species. These sites will be surveyed in future years.
A single species of conservation concern was the gang-gang cockatoo (Callocephalon fimbriatum), which has only recently been listed by the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.
“We need to understand what native bird species are present within plantations before we can effectively manage these values in line with the industry needs, so we set up a project to collect the data,” Dr Kerryn Herman project Officer at BirdLife Australia said.
“What we have learnt through ongoing monitoring is that whilst there are differences in the assemblages of birds found in plantations compared to native forest, the plantation themselves also provide usable habitat for birds. We have nesting records as well as foraging.
“Plantations are not the ‘biological deserts’ many have claimed them to be. By better understanding how birds use plantation, improved management practices can contribute to not only a sustainable timber resource, but also sustainable biodiversity.”
The aim of the monitoring program is to address the monitoring requirements under both FSC and Responsible Wood certification. The requirement is for biodiversity to be maintained and enhanced across the certified area.
“PF Olsen Australia is seeking to make birdlife monitoring a standard part of its monitoring regime on all the certified forests it manages,” David Bennett PF Olsen Forest Systems Manager said.
“The program that Dr Herman designed seeks to examine changes in birdlife that can be attributed solely to plantation management. In order to understand and differentiate broader landscape changes, observations are made at control sites in adjacent native vegetation.”
