Poaching and Illegal Logging Are Wiping Out Ghana’s Birds
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Researchers find the African countrys bird population has fallen by half since 1995 while deforestation has increased 600 percent.
Illegal logging in the Krokosua Hills Forest Reserve in Ghana. (Photo: Nicole Arcilla)
http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/09/17/ghanas-birds-are-being-wiped-out-illegal-logging
SEP 17, 2015 John R. Platt covers the environment, technology, philanthropy, and more for Scientific American, Conservation, Lion, and other publications.
The biodiversity-rich forests of Ghana should be full of the cries and chirps of dozens of native bird species. Instead, the only sound you hear at night is gunfire.
You feel like youre in a war zone, said Nicole Arcilla, a postdoctoral researcher at Drexel University who spent weeks in Ghanas forests studying and counting the countrys birds. The bullets, she said, werent aimed at people. Its not humans versus humans, she said. Its humans versus all other life.
Poachers and illegal deforestation have taken a terrible toll on Ghanas wildlife. Previous studies have shown dramatic declines in many of the countrys mammals. Now, a new paper by Arcilla and other researchers has found that the situation is just as bad for Ghanas birds. According to their research, the number of forest birds has declined by more than 50 percent since 1995. The number of species has also fallen.
During that same period, the level of both legal and illegal logging has increased 600 percent.
FULL story at link.
The population of the olive sunbird in Ghana has fallen 50 percent since 2000. (Photo: Nicole Arcilla)