The outcome of the ongoing biodiversity crisis depends on the capacity of Earth’s wildlife to persist in working landscapes (i.e. human-dominated landscapes composed of farms, cities, and remnant natural habitats). Yet the species that occupy working landscapes are often distinct from those in protected areas, with a large group of ‘sensitive species’ thought to rarely venture into human-dominated landscapes. Determining whether and how working lands can be restored to benefit sensitive species remains a major challenge. Moreover, it remains unclear how shifts in biological communities between protected areas and working landscapes affect the many cultural services that people derive from wildlife. Indeed, very few studies have integrated the types of social and ecological data necessary to effectively co-manage ecosystems for both species of conservation concern and culturally important species. We integrated bird census data (three years across 150 point count locations) with questionnaire surveys (>400 people) to evaluate changes in culturally important species across climate and land-use gradients in Costa Rica. We then analyzed community composition to understand how gradients of forest cover, fragmentation, and regional precipitation determine how conserving (or restoring) tropical forests in working landscapes could safeguard entire communities, especially sensitive species and species of high cultural importance.
Results/Conclusions
We found that agricultural sites maintained relatively high bird diversity but hosted very distinct communities from those found in protected areas. Agricultural communities were dominated by wide-ranging generalists, whereas protected areas housed many more range-restricted, vulnerable species. Nonetheless, in wetter, more forested regions, bird communities were indistinguishable between protected areas and privately-owned forest patches, despite privately-owned forests being twice as fragmented and significantly more disturbed. We also found that species valued by farmers, urbanites, and birdwatchers for identity, bequest, birdwatching, acoustic aesthetics, and education were more likely to occupy wetter and forested sites in both protected areas and on private lands. Disliked species, in contrast, tended to occupy drier and deforested sites. Our results suggest that more culturally important species also tend to be more ecologically vulnerable. They also indicate that conserving or restoring forests in working landscapes, particularly within wetter regions and already forested landscapes, may help safeguard Neotropical bird communities and associated cultural services.