Overall, the climate is strongly seasonal, with mild summers (in which much of the rain falls) and a dry winter. The northern part of the EBA experiences hotter, drier weather, but clouds provide humidity even in the dry season there. The mountains are noted for their very high floral diversity, with probably more than 4,000 species of vascular plants found in a mosaic of communities from gallery forest and semi-humid forest ('capões') to shrubby savanna and arid montane scrub with variable numbers of small trees and palms ('campos cerrados'), to open and rocky grasslands ('campos rupestres'). The dominant vegetation between 700 and 2,000 m is campos rupestres, noted for a high degree of endemism at both genus and species level (WWF/IUCN 1997).

All the restricted-range birds are found in the campos habitats of the EBA, principally above 700 m. There are some distributional differences, with Polystictus superciliaris and Embernagra longicauda being found throughout the EBA, whereas the two Augustes hummingbirds form a superspecies with A. lumachellus confined to the northern half of the EBA and A. scutatus to the southern. Neopelma chrysolophum is found at only the southern end of the EBA in the Serra do Caraça with most of it range lying in the Serra do Mar (EBA 076). Asthenes luizae was discovered only in 1985 and was not described formally until 1990. To date, it is known only from a small part of the Serra do Cipó in the south, where it inhabits rock crevices and bushes on isolated outcrops in grassland. It is separated geographically from its closest relative, Short-billed Canestero A. baeri, by at least 1,450 km to the south-west (Pearman 1990). Scytalopus novacapitalis is found in this EBA mainly at Caraça (although this population may represent an as-yet-undescribed taxon), with a single sighting from Serra do Cipó; it occurs mainly west of the EBA in Goiás, Federal District and western Minas Gerais (s032). Populations of other tapaculos further north may also represent other undescribed taxa (R. Williams verbally 1997).

Much of this EBA has been colonized since diamonds and gold were found in the mountains in the 1800s, and up to 1890 it was estimated that one million people lived in the Minas Gerais part of the region. Gold-mining on a large scale died out at the turn of the century but small operations still continue, and quartz crystals and manganese are also mined (WWF/IUCN 1997). The major land use today is cattle-ranching, with cultivation being less of a threat owing to the generally low soil fertility compared to the surrounding central Brazilian plateau. Cattle are grazed in natural grasslands, but fire is a threat in areas where new pastures are being created. The forests are used for timber extraction, charcoal and building materials, and all these developments are rapidly destroying large areas of pristine habitat.

Currently Asthenes luizae and Scytalopus novacapitalis are the only restricted-range species which are considered threatened, although a further four are Near Threatened. This treatment reflects the tiny range of A. luizae compared to the other species, and there is some evidence that it suffers from brood-parasitism by cowbirds (Vielliard 1990). S. novacapitalis is listed because it is vulnerable to habitat loss through fire (Collar et al. 1992).

As many as seven other threatened species have been recorded in the EBA (albeit mostly sporadically) within four Key Areas (Wege and Long 1995): Morro do Chapéu (unprotected) and Chapada Diamantina National Park (1,520 km²) in Bahia where arid-scrub species such as Great Xenops Megaxenops parnaguae and Pectoral Antwren Herpsilochmus pectoralis (both classified as Vulnerable) occur, and Serra do Cipó National Park (338 km²) and Caraça Natural Park, both in Minas Gerais, which have a few records of threatened species associated more with the Atlantic forests of south-east Brazil. Unfortunately, Asthenes luizae is not found in any of these reserves, although its small range falls close to the Serra do Cipó National Park boundary, and so only a small extension of the protected area would be needed to include it (Collar et al. 1992).

Stattersfield, A. J., Crosby, M. J., Long, A. J. and Wege, D. C. (1998) Endemic Bird Areas of the World. Priorities for biodiversity conservation. BirdLife Conservation Series 7. Cambridge, UK: BirdLife International.

Recommended citation
BirdLife International (2024) Endemic Bird Area factsheet: Central Brazilian hills and tablelands. Downloaded from https://datazone.birdlife.org/eba/factsheet/70 on 22/12/2024.