Conference Agenda

The critical role birds play across multifunctional landscapes in sub-saharan Africa necessitates the dynamic relationship between them, the indigenous peoples and local communities. They are excellent environmental indicators alerting man of a pollution problem. They are an integral part of the ecosystem as they serve as mobile links within the vast food chains and webs that exist in an agroecological mangrove environment. Recent surveys in an oil-polluted mangrove community- Bodo, Rivers State, Nigeria revealed that mangrove restoration success attracted a diversity of bird species thriving in the environment. The diverse habitats found in an agroecological mangrove landscape; edges, shrubs, patches, mangrove trees are good sites for roosting, nesting and foraging for birds. Proper monitoring of the mangrove restoration and farmland management practices need to be adopted to preserve and conserve this landscape of high conservation value and refugia for bird species.

Ecological intensification can be used to enhance crop yield while supporting biodiversity and ecosystem services. Push-pull cropping is a type of ecological intensification that was developed in East Africa to protect maize from stem borers and that subsequently was found to also reduce fall armyworm and Striga weeds and to improve soil fertility and crop yield (www.pushpull.net). We, however, still have a poor understanding of when and where push-pull works best. We studied how soil fertility and landscape composition determine the efficacy of push-pulls in increasing the diversity of invertebrate predators, reducing the abundance of pests and weeds, and enhancing crop yield. Data was collected in Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. In each country, twelve to sixteen pairs of push-pull and non-push-pull maize and sorghum fields were selected along gradients of landscape-level grassland cover and soil type. In each field, we measured the diversity of predators, pest pressure (stem borers and fall armyworm), Striga weeds, a range of variables contributing to soil fertility, and maize yields. Data will be analyzed using PCAs to summarize soil and landscape variables and SEMs to evaluate the direct and indirect cascading effects on diversity of invertebrate predators, pest and weed control, and maize yield.

Woody plants in the forest-agriculture mosaic provide many different ecosystem services. They provide house construction wood, fuelwood and medicine for local people. They also provide erosion control, climate regulation, and biodiversity maintenance services, which can further underpin ecosystem integrity and functions. Using a case study from southwestern Ethiopia, for example, we found that such services significantly increased with diversity. We also found that local people greatly depend on many species for such services. Nevertheless, deforestation and land-use intensification endangered species maintenance. For example, we found that native species richness decreased with coffee management intensity and in secondary forests but increased with current distance from forest edge in primary and secondary forests. Similarly, the richness of forest and dietary specialist bird species increased with forest naturalness, distance from edge and amount of forest cover. In farmland, we found agricultural land use legacy effects on plants. Local people felt limited property and use rights, and most widely used species appeared to have been overharvested. Therefore, multifunctional landscape maintenance requires safeguarding primary habitats and fostering cultural landscape development. Specifically, it entails to recognize local people, their needs, and experiences, and to clearly define their property and use rights, and responsibilities to resolve misuses.