The impact of political history on birds: A case study in north-eastern Mpumalanga, South Africa

Abstract

The interaction between government policy and bird distributions was one of the themes running through the results of the First Southern African Bird Atlas Project (SABAP1). However, this observation was never explicitly transformed this idea into the "red thread" for a review of bird distributions in southern Africa. This theme, the impact of land-use on biodiversity, specifically in bird abundance and bird communities, is pursued in this paper, with a pilot study of two adjacent half degree grid cells in north-eastern Mpumalanga, South Africa. The study compares the bird community in part of the former "self-governing state" of Gazankulu with the immediately adjacent section of the Kruger National Park