Impacts of environmental change on large terrestrial bird species in South Africa: insights from citizen science data

Abstract

Large terrestrial bird species, especially cranes and bustards, have adapted to low intensity agriculture to varying degrees, but large-scale industrial agriculture is in general inimical to these species. Cranes are charismatic and well studied, but bustards are retiring and in general cryptically coloured, and little is known of most species. Of South Africa's 10 bustard species, two are endemic and three subspecies are endemic or near-endemic. Six species are threatened or near-threatened. Three crane species occur in South Africa, one of which is near-endemic; all are threatened. This thesis used data from two long-term public participation bird monitoring projects to improve our understanding of six of these 13 species. The first and second Southern African Bird Atlas Projects (SABAP1, 1987-1992, and SABAP2, 2007-) provide two sets of presence/absence data which can be compared. The Coordinated Avifaunal Roadcounts (CAR; 1993-) project provides roadcount data spanning a similar period.