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Raptors at Risk: proceedings of the V World Conference on Birds of Prey and Owls

by R.D. Chancellor

Summary

Proceedings of the V World Conference on Birds of Prey and Owls. There are still few studies of the long-term dynamics of a complete raptor community, least of all in the tropics. In Africa, the pioneering population monitoring of eagles in Kenya by Brown and in Zimbabwe by Gargett are noteworthy. Furthermore, the consequences of habitat fragmentation and isolation on bird communities, currently a deep concern, have been thoroughly analyzed in temperate forests, as well as in tropical forests but rarely in Africa and never specifically on a raptor community. Reserves that protect natural habitat patches are often bound to become isolated within a matrix of initially similar but soon degraded habitat increasingly unsuitable for at least some species that eventually survive only in the reserve. Moreover, edge effects add their negative consequences to those of isolation and further imperil the survival of small population. This process, well known in forest fragments, may also occur in grasslands. Raptors are highly sensitive to prey availability, vegetation structure pollution and human disturbance and thus are good indicators of environmental changes.