Abstract:
Coffee is the most important tropical commodity and is grown in high-priority areas for biological conservation. There is abundant literature on the conservation value of coffee farms internationally, but
there has been little research on this topic in Africa. Ethiopia is a diverse and little-studied country with
high levels of avian endemism, pressing conservation challenges, and where Coffea arabica originated. We
sampled bird communities in shade coffee farms and moist evergreen Afromontane forest in Ethiopia utilizing standard mist netting procedures at seven sites over three years to evaluate bird species richness,
diversity and community structure. Although species diversity did not differ between shade coffee and
forest, shade coffee farms had over double the species richness of forest sites and all but one of the nine
Palearctic migratory species were captured only in shade coffee. There was a greater relative abundance
of forest specialists and understory insectivores in forest, demonstrating that little-disturbed forest is
critical for sustaining these at-risk groups of birds. Nonetheless, all species recorded in primary forest
control sites were also recorded in shade coffee, indicating that Ethiopian shade coffee is perhaps the
most ‘‘bird-friendly’’ coffee in the world. This is an important finding for efforts to conserve forest birds
in Africa, and for shade coffee farmers that may benefit from avian pest regulation and biodiversityfriendly coffee certifications.
