Preventing extinctions
James Lowen explores how conservation organisation BirdLife International is saving globally-threatened birds
How conservation organisation BirdLife International is saving globally-threatened birds
It’s moving left, in the canopy!” Jim Lawrence makes sure that I can see the Canada Warbler as the diminutive slaty-blue and lemonyellow bird sifts caterpillars behind a verdant shroud in central Colombia’s highlands. “Oh yeah!” Jim shrieks happily, his camera firing an excited salvo. “I really wanted to photograph this bird.” Jim is global marketing manager for BirdLife International, a worldwide charity whose UK partner is the RSPB. His delight is all the more intense because he has recently recruited ProColombia (the tourist board of this South American country) to support endeavours protecting Canada Warblers on their Andean wintering grounds by becoming a ‘Species Champion’ for BirdLife’s Preventing Extinctions Programme.
Last year, this initiative celebrated its 12th anniversary. I remember clearly its launch, which took place amid a great buzz at the BirdLife World Congress in Argentina in 2008, where I was working as a photographer. The aim of the Programme was precisely what it said on the tin. “BirdLife couldn’t, with a clear conscience, allow any more bird species to go extinct as a result of human activity,” Jim recalls. The Programme brings together under one virtual roof the species-conservation efforts of each of the hundred-odd organisations in BirdLife’s unique worldwide partnership.
For Roger Safford, BirdLife’s Senior Programme Manager, the initiative is a clear statement that such extinctions “simply aren’t acceptable”.
Working with governments, the
Preventing Extinctions Programme often works as a match-making service, bringing together two new communities. It pairs up ‘Species Guardians’ (experts who take the lead in conserving threatened birds) with ‘Species Champions’ (typically individuals or companies who raise awareness for and fund vital conservation activity).
The Programme is underpinned by BirdLife scientists who maintain the avian element of the global IUCN Red List of Threatened Species – the litany of unfortunate birds in most emphatic danger of worldwide extinction and thus in most urgent need of saviours’ attention.
By the end of its first decade, the Programme – across the whole BirdLife partnership – has helped just shy of 500 threatened species worldwide.