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…This article was originally published on Mongabay
The post A forest restoration project brings birdsong back to Angola’s highest mountain first appeared on EnviroLink Network.