Teachers of CCTT investigate the effects of wild cattle in the páramos
Researchers from the Faculty of Science and Technology Pedro Astudillo Webster, Santiago Barros, David Siddons and Edwin Zárate published the article entitled “Influence of habitat modification by livestock on páramo bird abundance in southern Andes of Ecuador"In the scientific journal"Studies on Neotropical Fauna and Environment".
The study is framed in a series of 15 articles that the authors have generated from the 2009 in order to identify how sensitive indicators of the health of ecosystems change depending on activities such as livestock, road layout, climate change, among others.
The recently published research was born as a thesis project by Santiago Barros in 2013 and basically focused on sectors of the Cajas and Quimsacocha National Park, purely livestock towns. His objective was to demonstrate what happens to the effects of wild cattle in the wasteland.
This cattle does not have livestock productivity, that is, it is not intended for meat or milk; however, people use two or three wild cows to demonstrate possession of highland páramo sectors.
"It was a bit complex to demonstrate this process since we did not have a specific area dedicated to livestock, so cattle moved freely throughout the landscape," said Astudillo.
In spite of the difficulties, the researchers of the School of Biology showed basically that to greater modification of the habitat by the cattle there is a loss of the structural diversity of the páramo, affecting the birds of the place, when several previous publications maintained that the wild cattle It was compatible with the páramo ecosystem.
"We are demonstrating that in the region, in the North Andes of South America, this type of activities are not compatible with the conservation of important species such as birds," concluded Astudillo.
