Last November the LabOr team published a paper in the journal Agroforestry Systems entitled Can birds play a role as High Nature Value indicators of montado system? The article follows the master’s thesis in Conservation Biology (University of Évora) of Ana Luisa Catarino.
Montados support a high biological diversity associated with low management intensity and high landscape diversity. Among other features, this allows the classification of the montado as a high nature value system (HNV).
The main goal of this paper was to evaluate the role of birds as indicators of high nature value of the montado. For this we tested several groups of birds – farmland, edge, forest generalists and forest specialists species; and also some universal indicators such as species conservation status, Shannon’s diversity index and species richness.
The results suggest that some groups of birds may be used as indicators of HNV in some types of montados. However, there is still a need to develop an indicator which can be applied transversely to all types of montados.