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Future prospects for Nearctic migrants wintering in Caribbean forests

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

Joseph M. Wunderle Jr  and
Robert B. Waide
Joseph M. Wunderle Jr
Affiliation:
International Institute of Tropical Forestry, U.S.D.A. Forest Service, Box B, Palmer, PR 007 21, U.S.A.
Robert B. Waide
Affiliation:
Terrestrial Ecology Division, GPO Box 363682, University of Puerto Rico, San Juan, PR 00936, U.S.A.
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Summary

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Wintering Nearctic migrants constitute a high proportion of the birds present in many terrestrial habitats in the Bahamas and Greater Antilles, but their proportions decline southward through the Lesser Antilles. Many migrants winter on densely populated islands which have been extensively deforested. Current estimates show that only 21% of the land area, or approximately five million hectares, remain in forest on Caribbean and Bahamian islands, indicating that most of the major deforestation has already occurred. Although reforestation is under way on a few islands, many remnant forest fragments are threatened by humans or natural disturbances such as drought or hurricanes. Thus wintering migrants requiring closed-canopy forest are at greatest risk to habitat loss, whereas species requiring early successional habitats are not currently threatened, assuming that pesticide use does not increase. Policies which protect forests, particularly mangroves, wet limestone and montane broadleaf forests in the Greater Antilles, and broadleaf scrub (“coppice”) in the Bahamas, will be beneficial to migrants and endemic species.

Type
Growing Points in Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation
Information
Bird Conservation International , Volume 4 , Issue 2-3: Neotropical Migrants , September 1994 , pp. 191 - 207
Copyright
Copyright © Birdlife International 1994

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