Ethiopian Shade Coffee Is World's Most Bird Friendly
Ethiopian coffee farmer Awol Abagojam and his son Isaac harvest their product near the village of Choche, much the same way their ancestors did a thousand years ago. Shady coffee plantations in Ethiopia , where coffee has been grown for at least a thousand years, hold more bird species than any other coffee farms in the world, new research shows. l The research suggests that traditional cultivation practices there support better bird biodiversity than any other coffee farms in the world. In Ethiopia, coffee is traditionally grown on plantations shaded by native trees. These farms boasted more than 2.5 times as many bird species as adjacent mountain forest, according to a study slated for publication February 11 in the journal Biological Conservation . "That was a surprise," says study co-author Cagan H. Sekercioglu , a biologist at the University of Utah and a National Geographic Society grantee. Further, "all 19 understory bird species we s