Thresholds of Logging Intensity to Maintain Tropical Forest Biodiversity

Primary tropical forests are lost at an alarming rate, and much of the remaining forest is being degraded by selective logging [1–5]. Yet, the impacts of logging on biodiversity remain poorly understood, in part due to the seemingly conflicting findings of case studies: about as many studies have reported increases in biodiversity after selective logging as have reported decreases [2, 6–11]. Consequently, meta-analytical studies that treat selective logging as a uniform land use tend to conclude that logging has negligible effects on biodiversity [2, 6, 12]. However, selectively logged forests might not all be the same [2, 13–15]. Through a pantropical meta-analysis and using an information-theoretic approach, we compared and tested alternative hypotheses for key predictors of the richness of tropical forest fauna in logged forest. We found that the species richness of invertebrates, amphibians, and mammals decreases as logging intensity increases and that this effect varies with taxonomic group and continental location. In particular, mammals and amphibians would suffer a halving of species richness at logging intensities of 38 m3 ha−1 and 63 m3 ha−1, respectively. Birds exhibit an opposing trend as their total species richness increases with logging intensity. An analysis of forest bird species, however, suggests that this pattern is largely due to an influx of habitat generalists into heavily logged areas while forest specialist species decline. Our study provides a quantitative analysis of the nuanced responses of species along a gradient of logging intensity, which could help inform evidence-based sustainable logging practices from the perspective of biodiversity conservation. [Display omitted] •Mammal, amphibian, and invertebrate richness decreases with logging intensity•Increases in bird species richness are caused by the influx of habitat generalists•Logging intensity of 38 m3 ha−1 would cause halving of mammal richness•Logging intensity of 63 m3 ha−1 would cause halving of amphibian richness Burivalova et al. show that selective logging in tropical forests should not be considered as a uniform land use when assessing impacts on biodiversity. Whereas low logging intensities may be relatively benign for species richness, even moderate logging intensities can lead to a 50% loss of amphibian and mammalian species richness.