The fate of the great woodpeckers and hornbills in Nepal: No big trees, no life

Large woodpeckers and hornbills need large trees to fulfil their life-history needs. Such habitat features present essential ecological processes and services, including insect-control, fungi maintenance, water storage and carbon sequestration! Commercail overcutting of those forests, primarily in the mid and lower hills started in the 1950s and peaked in the 1970s but are now often replaced with more successful community forest management and some afforestation. The importance of community managed forests is very complimentary to even more important protected park forests which happen to preserve the natural structure of cavity-nesting bird communities. Of the woodpeckers and hornbills occurring in Nepal, the Great Slaty Woodpecker Mulleripicus pulverulentus and the Rufous-necked Hornbill Aceros nipalensis are already critically endangered or locally extinct respectively.