My African biodiversity work involve coordinating the African Amphibian & Reptile Program of the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, pushing forward with conservation of the most threatened species in the continent, particularly in Cameroon, Nigeria and Uganda.
One landscape I have appraised in particular is the Budongo landscape in Uganda, that has a well documented history for managed, selective logging. We have seen clear amphibian assemblage structure between subsistence agriculture, forest continuously (but selectively, however illegal) exploited by local communities and forest selectively logged in the 1940s-70s. The continuously exploited forest had the most severe impact for amphibian abundance and diversity, with agricultural land showing markedly different species even if they were far more abundant and diverse than the former. Impact on human well being was not clear nor was measured, but the community exploitation of forest was born partly out of poverty, but we are noticing it as a preferred way of life too.
