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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.
news.mongabay.com
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.
A forest restoration project brings birdsong back to Angola’s highest mountain
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...
news.mongabay.com
