Coffee for the birds
Humboldt State University wildlife Professor Matt Johnson will head back to Jamaica this fall to continue a study into how birds are better than pesticides for controlling insects on the country's gourmet coffee farms.
Through a grant from the National Geographic Society, Johnson's investigation will continue into the economic value of birds on coffee farms near forest reserves in the Blue Mountains. That region produces coffee that sells for up to $60 a pound.
But the reserves are seeing more and more intensive coffee plantations crop up on their outskirts. If Johnson can show that more traditional, less intensive methods attract birds and control pests, that may protect the biologically rich reserves.
What Johnson's team has found so far has been promising, he said.
"We're finding an off-the-charts effect," Johnson said.
His team last year placed netting over coffee plants to keep out birds, aiming to see if insect damage was worse inside, or outside, the enclosures. The worst pest of the coffee plant is the coffee berry boring beetle, an insect Johnson
said some farmers spend 25 percent of their incomes to combat with pesticides. The pest drills into the unripe beans, leaving a hole.
When his team examined the enclosures - which exclude only birds, not insect-eating lizards - they found two to three times as many holes in plants birds couldn't reach. Johnson will work with economics professor Steve Hackett and an entomologist from the University of West Indies to calculate the value of the birds as pest control on both small and large farms. "If we can really establish that birds are providing meaningful biological control," Johnson said, "that really gives the farmers a reason to do something to have birds on their farms." www.times-standard.com
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