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Agroforestry Systems as Habitat for Avian Species: Assessing Its Role in Conservation

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Abstract

In the current scenario of rapid conversion of tropical forests into human-dominated activities landscape, the present study was undertaken to understand the role of existing agroforestry systems in conservation of avian species. Three types of agroforestry systems namely tea gardens, homegardens and agrisilviculture were selected in the Brahmaputra North Bank Landscape of Assam, northeast India for the study. A total of 468 point counts revealed 164 bird species belonging to 51 families and 18 orders across all the three different types of agroforestry systems. Tea gardens showed significantly higher bird species richness followed by homegardens and agrisilviculture systems. As per IUCN, four species were categorized as Near Threatened and one species was categorized as Vulnerable. Out of 164 species recorded, 68.3% species were residents, 30.5% species were winter visitors and remaining were summer visitors (1.2%). Majority of the species (45.7%) were common to all the three types of selected agroforestry systems. The feeding guilds revealed that most of the species were insectivorous (50.0%) in habit. A total of 167 tree species belonging to 54 families and 24 orders was recorded across all the three different types of agroforestry systems. The highest tree species richness was recorded in the homegardens (160), followed by agrisilviculture systems (19) and least in tea gardens (11). No statistically significant correlation was found among bird species richness and patch size, tree species richness and number of bird species individuals. The selected agroforestry systems have provided shelter, nesting space, feeding and foraging grounds for birds during the winter season. This data can be useful for the policy makers, tea garden managers, homegarden owners for framing conservation policies of avian species in an era of natural wildlife habitat loss and degradation.

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Acknowledgements

We are thankful to the Director and Head of Department of Forestry, North Eastern Regional Institute of Science and Technology for their administrative support and to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, New Delhi for providing financial support to carry out this work. We are grateful to the owners of the homegardens, agrisilviculture systems and tea gardens for providing permission to conduct the study. We owe tremendous thanks to all the field assistants who helped us in carrying out the field work smoothly. We are indebted to Mr. Manoj Singh, Mr. Parimal Chandra Ray and other colleagues for their useful comments to improve the manuscript. We also thank our anonymous reviewers for constructive comments which helped to improve the quality of the manuscript.

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  1. Department of Forestry, NERIST, Nirjuli, Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh, 791109, India

    Yashmita-Ulman, Madhubala Sharma & Awadhesh Kumar

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Yashmita-Ulman, Sharma, M. & Kumar, A. Agroforestry Systems as Habitat for Avian Species: Assessing Its Role in Conservation. Proc Zool Soc 71, 127–145 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12595-016-0198-3

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