Avian Assemblage, Monitoring and Bioassessment of Margalla Hills National Park, Islamabad Capital Territory, Pakistan

We aimed to establish avian assemblage, bioassessment scale and to provide indices for future monitoring of birds in hiking trails, undisturbed forest and urban areas of Margalla Hills National Park, Islamabad, Pakistan. The park harbors a good assemblage of birds. As many as 12,295 individuals of 83 species (12 orders, 38 families) were recorded from the National Park. The hiking trails (74 species, 5219 individuals) were found to be more diverse followed by undisturbed forest (60 species, 3377 individuals) while urban areas (41 species, 3699 individuals) were least diverse. The bird abundance (number of individuals and encounter rate) was significantly different among the studied habitats. The encounter rate is provided as an index of monitoring and bioassesmnet of the National Park. The bioassessment of the National Park, based on the studied biometrics using avifauna as an indicator of biotic integrity, revealed excellent biotic integrity.