Low-intensive agricultural landscapes could help to sustain Green Peafowl Pavo muticus inhabiting surrounding forest patches in Northern Thailand

Abstract

Wildlife in Southeast Asia is greatly affected by agricultural expansion. While intensive farming causes biodiversity decline, low-intensive farming can support some adapted wildlife. In Thailand, the rapid transformation of forests to agricultural landscapes over three decades has resulted in large forest and biodiversity loss, with several Endangered species suffering from cropland expansion. Among these, the Green Peafowl, an Endangered Galliformes widely distributed across Southeast Asia, has shown the capacity to adapt well to low-intensive agri culture landscapes by using crops as food sources. Here we investigated in detail the Green Peafowl’s habitat use in an agricultural landscape surrounding a large forest patch composed of three protected areas in northern Thailand. Using line transect surveys and compositional anal ysis, we estimated the monthly Peafowl use of different crop types and different crop structures between January 2020 and January 2021. The Green Peafowl’s habitat use was significantly non random. The order of habitat preference was timber plantations > orchards > cropland > fallow land. The species also preferred cropland within a 500 m buffer zone around the forest patch. The species preferred crops with a canopy structure (timber and orchards) that resembles their natural habitat. Our results confirm that low-intensive and diversified agricultural landscapes could help to sustain the Green Peafowl population. Importantly, we also show that closed canopy crops, such as large tree plantations like teak, rubber and orchards, can provide good alternatives for reforestation to reconnect forest fragments and isolated patches in highly degraded habitats as they allow the species to move further away from forest edges within the degraded landscape.