Bird communities dwindle on New Mexico's Pajarito Plateau

The numbers of birds and bird species are declining in an area where research predicts major loss of pine forests

Date:August 16, 2018

Source:DOE/Los Alamos National Laboratory

Researchers have found declines in the number and diversity of bird populations at nine sites surveyed in northern New Mexico, where eight species vanished over time while others had considerably dropped.

"These birds are not using these habitats anymore," said Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist Jeanne Fair, lead author of the study published recently in the journal Biological Conservation.

The study, conducted on those sites covering several hundred acres on the Pajarito Plateau from 2003 to 2013, revealed a 73 percent decrease in abundance of birds, dropping from an average of 157 to 42 birds. The diversity of bird species also dropped by 45 percent, from a mean of 31 to 17 species. Some of the species impacted include the hairy woodpecker, western tanager and violet-green swallow.

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