In Uganda, the national Forest Authority has conducted a remarkably thorough inventory programme of five wildlife groups in 50 Forest Reserves, with the aim of identifying priority areas for conservation (Howard et al. 1997, 1998). The study took 100 person-years, cost US$1 million, and surveyed woody plants, birds, small mammals (rodents and insectivores), butterflies and large moths (saturnids and sphingids). A total of 2,452 species was identified. Independently, NatureUganda (BirdLife in Uganda) has identified and documented a network of 30 Important Bird Areas (IBAs) (Byaruhanga et al. 2001), 13 of which are also Forest Reserves. This provides an opportunity to evaluate how effectively these 13 IBAs, selected on bird data alone, represent total species richness across five taxon groups.

Analysis shows that the 13 ‘forest’ IBAs, with an area of 5,445 km², capture 2,181 (89%) of all the species identified in the 50 forest reserves, covering a total of 10,000 km². This suggests that these 13 IBAs are an effective suite of sites for conserving a large and representative proportion of Uganda’s forest biodiversity (Pain et al. 2005). The low cost of gathering IBA data, compared with conducting site inventories for multiple taxa, reinforces the practicality of using birds as beacons for Key Biodiversity Areas.