<
https://news.mongabay.com/2024/05/a-forest-restoration-project-brings-birdsong-back-to-angolas-highest-mountain/>
"MOUNT MOCO, Angola — On the slopes of Angola’s highest mountain stands the
gray jagged stump of a once mighty tree.
It’s the remnant of a Guinea plum (
Parinari excelsa), a species native to
Mount Moco’s evergreen forests. When South African ornithologist Michael Mills
first started to survey the mountain’s forests in 2005, it was a tall tree with
a crown of evergreen leaves flourishing beside a small stream.
“A fire got in, and got into the roots and killed it,” he says.
The mountain’s Afromontane forests once formed large, dark-green patches
against the lighter green and golden-brown shades of Moco’s grasslands as they
changed with the seasons. Fires and the harvesting of timber for firewood and
building materials have reduced many of these forest patches to narrow ribbons
surviving along steep gullies and ravines.
This makes it easier for them to be overrun by fires or other threats, as no
part of these remnants is far from the edge.
“If you had a completely circular patch it would have much less edge than a
patch with the same area which is long and narrow,” Mills says.
Afromontane forests are high-altitude evergreen rainforests that are isolated
remnants of a once widespread ecosystem now confined to mountainsides and
hilltops across East, Southern and Central Africa.
In 1973, the forest above the village of Kanjonde was large and circular, with
a well-developed canopy, according to one historical photograph. A photograph
taken in 2016 from the same position shows that almost all the trees in that
original forest patch were gone, leaving only a narrow strip along the sides of
a deep gorge. From an estimated 200 hectares (about 500 acres) in the 1970s,
the mountain’s forest patches now total less than 85 hectares (210 acres)."
Via
Fix the News:
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https://fixthenews.com/good-news-water-sanitation-hygiene-poverty-cambodia-barn-owls-uk/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
