Land tenure and biological communities in the dry Chaco forests of northern Argentina

MARINARO, S; GRAU, HR; MACCHI, L; ZELAYA P

JOURNAL OF ARID ENVIRONMENTS

ACADEMIC PRESS LTD-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD

Lugar: Manchester; Año: 2015 vol. 123 p. 60 - 67

0140-1963

Environmental factors and land use control habitat quality and resources availability, thus regulatingspecies distribution. Land tenure in general, and particularly traditional indigenous properties, stronglyinfluence land use in forest ecosystems, but their association with biodiversity is poorly explored. Wesurveyed 43 forests in the Northern Argentina Gran Chaco, to (1) compare species diversity andcomposition of birds, mammals and trees between land tenures across a 17 million-hectares region; andto (2) compare diversity between Wichí indigenous properties and non-indigenous properties, within amore restricted geographic range to control for climatic and soil factors (n ¼ 19). Contrary to our expectations,protected areas did not include higher biodiversity, although they showed higher densities ofspecies specifically targeted for human harvest. Wichí properties were the most original regime in termsof community composition of birds and trees. Every land tenure had particular indicator bird and treespecies; thus a territorial conservation strategy could include a combination of all them, with a specialfocus on indigenous properties. Land tenure differences in biodiversity could be the complex result ofdifferent habitat quality derived from land use practices and of different geographic location.© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights