Conserving Insectivores and Pest Control Services in Costa Rican Coffee Plantations
An article in the Amigos Newsletter by Daniel Karp
http://www.stanford.edu/group/CCB/articles/dkarp-%20amigos%20newsletter.pdf
Excerpt:
"For decades, the primary method for predicting the future of biodiversity assumed that humandominated landscapes were biological deserts. These “species-area” models simplified
the world into two states: patches of habitat and a vast human-dominated matrix, unsuitable for wildlife. Based on these models, the 13% of the world’s terrestrial surface that currently exists as protected areas could only hope to protect 5-10% of terrestrial biodiversity. With expanding population and resource demands, creating sufficient protected areas to preserve Earth’s biota seemed impossible.
"Fortunately, biodiversity persists outside reserves. Almost ten years ago, Gretchen Daily, Paul Ehrlich, and G. Arturo Sánchez-Azofeifa found that startling numbers of bird species were living in the remnant forest patches, coffee plantations, and pastures surrounding the Las Cruces Biological Preserve. Since then, their finding has been replicated for moths, butterflies, herbaceous plants, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians in the same area...."