Forest Biodiversity Declines and Extinctions Linked with Forest Degradation: A Case Study from Australian Tall, Wet Forests
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
General comments:
The manuscript, entitled "Forest biodiversity declines and extinctions linked with forest degradation: A case study from Australian tall, wet forests" focuses on a detailed case study of species declines associated with forest degradation in south-eastern Australia’s montane ash (Eucalyptus spp.) forests. There are some issues with this manuscript, mainly related to the readability and composition of the manuscript.
Please review the quality of your English throughout the manuscript.
For in-text citations, use the MDPI reference style.
Generally, I recommend to the authors in the introduction to add more literature review to emphasize the need and originality of your research.
I suggest to the authors add a general methodology for the study.
The key findings and discussions were mixed. I suggest that you please write separately.
Specific comments:
Point 1: Is the manuscript article or review paper?
Point 2: Line 1: If the paper is an article. As a result, adhere to the detailed criteria when writing an article.
Point 3: Line 23 Sort your keywords alphabetically.
Point 4: Line 71 delete Background.
Point 5: Line 149 Please spell it correctly, “rhe”.
Point 6: Line 406 Table 1 has been moved to the annexe section.
Point 7: Write some recommendations separately to policymakers and implementers as a new subsection after the conclusion.
Overall, the study is interesting, but a major revision of the entire manuscript is required for publication in this journal. As a result, I recommend reconsideration after a major revision of the manuscript.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This is a well written and presented piece of work. It was a pleasure to read such an informative manuscript. I have some minor queries and comments that needs attention - please see the reviewed pdf provided.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
This study tries to reveal the relationship between animal species declines and forest degradation in south-eastern Australia’s montane ash forests, based on the meta-data of 40 years of observation. Unfortunately, the author failed to provide robust scientific evidence and information to address the issues proposed.
Although the author has indicated that “In this paper, using insights from an array of observational studies and experiments (sensu Cunningham and Lindenmayer 2016) conducted over the past 40 years, I provide a detailed case study of species decline and erosion of ecosystem condition in the tall, wet montane ash (Eucalyptus spp.) forests of the Central Highlands of Victoria.” (lines 45-48).
Long-term biodiversity monitoring in montane ash forests (line 104)
Additional supporting datasets (line 138).
I cannot see any diagram, figure, or table presenting results generated from those databases in Results, which could be used in the Discussion; only one table (Table 1) lists some threat effects and ways of mitigating them.
Thus, I do not think this is a work prepared for a research publication but a general report to the government and conservation organizations.
On the other hand, some statements and descriptions are pretty vague. Such as the first sentence in the Introduction:
“Over 40,000 species worldwide have been listed by the IUCN as being threatened with extinction (IUCN 2022). This comprises 28% of all species assessed, a very substantial increase from the 11,046 species reported as threatened in 2000 (IUCN 2022).”
Here, 40,000 species and 28% mean what? Animal species or plant species, or both?
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors seriously revised the manuscript. The manuscript can be published after editorial revisions.
Reviewer 3 Report
Although there have been some improvements, the main weakness of the manuscript, as I indicated previously, is the frames and the ways of dealing with databases shown in Table 1-12 databases are listed for this study. None of the diagrams or figures is provided to demonstrate the results based on those databases, such as how different kinds of animals have dynamically declined over the last 40 years if time-series data have been used.
A weird phenomenon is that all results used in the discussion come from the published papers (references), instead of from the database shown in Table 1. In other words, this is not an original research project but is somewhat similar to a review paper.
