What is the appropriate paradigm for riparian forest conservation?

Because forest width is thought to be the most relevant metric to ecological communities, it has persisted as the dominant paradigm and focus of management recommendations for riparian forest conservation. Consequently, managers may overlook important effects of the surrounding landscape matrix. We determined if characteristics of the landscape matrix, particularly the amount of urban development surrounding a forest, were better predictors of bird communities than forest width. We sampled breeding-bird communities 3 times each June 2001–2004 in 33 riparian forest sites (69–565 m wide) in Ohio, USA. We examined if bird community structure and composition were more closely associated with forest width or the amount of urban development within 1 km of each forest using canonical correlation analysis. Results indicate that the landscape matrix surrounding these relatively large forest tracts explained >94% of the variation in bird communities compared to <6% explained by forest width. Numbers of Neotropical migrants were negatively associated with urbanization in the landscapes (r = −0.43), whereas residents (r = 0.57) and short-distance migrants (r = 0.41) were positively associated with urbanization. Similar patterns persisted at the individual species level, particularly for Neotropical migrants as 76% of species in this guild were negatively related to urban development. Our findings suggest that the traditional approach to conserving riparian forests is not sufficient and that explicit consideration of the surrounding landscape matrix also should be a key component in conservation efforts.