the impacts of large-scale destruction in forests are easily visible. But what does one observe when the disturbance is at a small scale? Birds. The Environmental Studies Group of the Delhi-based Council for Social Development did just that at Sarsika Tiger Reserve, Rajasthan. They have come up with interesting results at the end of the first phase of their study. The fieldwork was carried out between March to May 2003.

The results show that net species diversity and bird densities were same in disturbed and undisturbed areas, but species compositions in the two categories were significantly different. Species diversity is a measure of both the variety of species and the relative proportion of each kind in the entire community, while density indicates the total number of species of a taxon found at a site over the days a study was conducted. Finding out species composition, on the other hand, means paying more attention to identifying individuals (sub-species) than the number of species.

Species reacted to changes in the structure of the forest