Agriculture and climate change UK (Commonwealth Union) – The disruption to any particular component of a natural ecosystems often results in sequence of events that could often lead to the destruction of the entire ecosystem.
A new study measuring biological sounds demonstrated the role palm oil and teakwood industries play in deforestation and hinder wildlife in Costa Rica.
A recording of Costa Rica’s expansive rainforests floods which was audible heard a steady drip of humidity from verdant plants, caws of vibrant toucans, signature screeches from howler monkeys that are audible miles away; with eyes shut, the researcher could almost feel the swoosh of air which the creatures made as they soared and swing higher up in the trees.
These were sounds from an extremely biodiverse rainforests in Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica, which are captured by researchers to measure the level and variety of wildlife species in a given place. The other audio, however, was anything but blissful.
Crickets were the chorus as life become a graveyard of the sounds that was the opposite. This audio was obtained from one of the several plantations, built by tearing down large areas of the rainforest. Researcher Dr Jenna Lawson of the Imperial College London, Department of Life Science saw firsthand the ghostly silence and undeniable wildlife scarcity for these plantations.
Dr Lawson is researching on the effects of rainforests in Costa Rica being rapidly transformed into palm and teak plantations. Palm plantations give palm oil, utilized in many everyday products from makeup to chocolate and teak tree plantations harvest which are used as prestigious furniture.
In defense of these sectors, certain companies stated that there are numerous wildlife and biodiversity in their plantations. However, the claims were inconsistent with Dr Lawson’s observations when she was there. “I noticed that we were facing a serious issue in this region,” she explains. “You can see all these animals living on the border of the plantations, but many of them just can’t get across.”
With the observations of huge differences in wildlife abundance between natural rainforests and human-built plantations resting with a few meters of separation, Dr Lawson focused the study on finding the true effect of these plantations on biodiversity.
She set out to measure the biodiversity as it can be hard to measure species diversity and abundance directly, she could gather knowledge on the health of a rainforest by monitoring its bioacoustic activity, or individual sounds made by the living organisms in specific ecosystems. A way to conduct this was the application of passive acoustic monitoring (PAM), which kept on recording the noises made by wildlife at various points of the day and can distinguish noises made by different species.
Dr Lawson and the other researchers set up 120 of these recorders at a variety of locations spread across the natural rainforest and in the teak and palm plantations. The devices recorded audio recordings day and night, 7 days.
In a natural rainforest, peaks of biotic sounds in the morning and at night can be observed. These dusk and dawn choruses such as birdsong, that’s essential foe communication needed for mating, egg laying, and other behaviors essential for surviving. Data gathered by PAM recorders in natural areas of the rainforest demonstrated these patterns, showing a healthy ecosystem.
Luckily, there is a path forward in tackling this issue. And eliminating palm oil and teak wood altogether isn’t necessarily the solution. “Palm oil isn’t inherently bad,” Dr Lawson explains. “But we need to think about how and where we put these plantations.” Rather than placing them in the middle of large rainforests, which prevents animals from crossing and leaves them isolated in patches, they could instead be grown on the edges of the rainforest.
