Dispatch from the Americas

Mara Kerry, Nature Canada’s Director of Conservation, recently returned from trips to Panama and Mexico, and provides this update on our migratory bird conservation work there.

	Local schoolchildren and tourists spot birds from this lookout site.

Each year, as the weather cools and the seasons change, millions of birds leave their Canadian breeding grounds to make the long journey south. If Canadians are to see their beloved warblers and hummingbirds the following spring, we know that there must be habitat waiting for them when they arrive in wintering grounds in places like Mexico and Panama.

That’s why, this fall, I followed the northern waterthrushes and the hooded warblers to South America to see old friends from two of Nature Canada’s BirdLife International partners, Panama Audubon and the Amigos de Sian Ka’an in Mexico. They took me to see local entrepreneurs who are improving the livelihoods of their communities while preserving habitat for migratory birds. Nature Canada oversees each of the projects on behalf of CIDA. This year, Carla Sbert, Nature Canada’s manager of conservation programs, came along for the journey.

First stop: Panama. Carla and I traveled 50km outside Panama City to two small communities in the Upper Bay of Panama, where Panama Audubon has been offering local villagers bird watching courses for over two years. Since my last visit, these classes have become even more popular, and the observations made by local residents have greatly enhanced our knowledge of migratory bird population patterns.

I arrived shortly after the hurricane season and found access to the project site was flooded!

In the island community of Chepillo, local builders have erected a bird lookout and established a 3 km interpretative trail, where tourists and local schoolchildren come to spot pelicans, western sandpipers and many species of shorebirds. Situated in a mangrove mudflat tidal ecosystem, this lookout sits inside an internationally designated RAMSAR site, an important stopover point for migratory birds. This modest effort is not enough to counter the pollution, deforestation, and urban expansion taking place nearby, but the project is helping to build allies among the local population, who ultimately will be the best stewards of this precious habitat.

Next stop: Mexico, where we visited two communities inside the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Freshwater and saltwater lagoons, mangroves, and subtropical forests make the Yucatan an ideal place for warblers and other wintering birds; it’s also a very popular tourist destination. Our partner, Amigos de Sian Ka’an, has designed a program to help local residents turn to ecotourism; by linking tourism dollars to healthy bird habitats, we’re trying to give the local communities a vested interest in preserving their natural resources. It’s working; we have already witnessed a shift away from timber cutting and furniture making in favour of ecotourism.

Working with local communities and our friends at BirdLife International to conserve these areas of rich biodiversity is essential to the health of this hemisphere’s migratory bird populations. If you’d like to know more about Nature Canada’s international bird conservation program, contact me at
1-800-267-4088 ext. 238 or mkerry@naturecanada.ca.

Aerial view of the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.