In the largest ever survey of rainforest birdlife, scientists have discovered that deforestation to create pastureland in Colombia is causing around 60% more damage to biodiversity than previously estimated.
Researchers have conducted the world’s biggest ever bird survey, recording 971 different species living in forests and cattle pastures across the South American country of Colombia. This represents almost 10% of the world’s birds.
They combined the results, gathered over a decade, with information on each species’ sensitivity to habitat conversion to find that the biodiversity loss caused by clearing rainforest for cattle pasture is on average 60% worse than previously thought.
The results are published today in the journal 'Nature Ecology and Evolution'.
Professor David Edwards in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences and Conservation Research Institute, senior author of the report, said: “This is a really surprising result. We found that the biodiversity loss caused by clearing rainforest for pastureland is being massively underestimated.”
He added: “When people want to understand the wider impact of deforestation on biodiversity, they tend to do a local survey and extrapolate the results. But the problem is that tree clearance is occurring at massive spatial scales, across all sorts of different habitats and elevations.
“When we looked the biodiversity impact of deforestation across thirteen different eco-regions in Colombia, we found a 62% greater biodiversity loss than local survey results would indicate.”
Reference: Socolar, J. B. et al: ‘Tropical biodiversity loss from land-use change is severely underestimated by local-scale assessments.’ Nature Ecology and Evolution, July 2025. DOI: 10.1038/s41559-025-02779-4
Image: Savanna hawk is a widespread species that invades formerly forested areas after clearance. Photo credit: David Edwards