The bird community of an Acacia-dominated secondary rainforest: A brief case study

Abstract

Secondary forests can assist in restoring ecosystems affected by habitat loss and fragmentation and may provide a cost-effective alternative to large-scale planting. In the Wet Tropics bioregion, abandoned farmland frequently develops successional forest dominated by Hickory Wattle Acacia celsa but there has been little research on its value to wildlife. We examined the bird communities of younger (17–25 years) and older (50+ years) Acacia-regrowth forests and compared them with those in contiguous cleared land and never-cleared rainforest over an 18–day period in November 2003 in one location on the Atherton Tablelands, Queensland. Cleared sites had the lowest bird species richness and contained a mix of grassland, eucalypt, mixed forest and rainforest-dependent species. Bird species richness was highest in the never-cleared forest. Cleared sites had significantly fewer mixed forest and rainforest-dependent bird species than never-cleared forest. In both regrowth age classes and in never-cleared forest, there were few grassland and eucalypt forest bird species and similar proportions of mixed forest and rainforest-dependent bird species. Cleared sites and younger regrowth had significantly fewer endemic bird species than never-cleared forest, and six rainforest-dependent species were not recorded in regrowth. Although regrowth as young as 17–25 years provides habitat for a range of rainforest species, even at 50+ years it may not support some rainforest species, including some regional endemics of conservation concern.