Save land, save species
As WLT pushes to save millions of hectares over the next few years, Birdwatch readers have a chance to play a part by becoming regular supporters of a conservation approach that has already made a difference for thousands of bird species, as WLT Director of Conservation Dr Richard Cuthbert writes.
For years, World Land Trust (WLT) Friends have delivered countless wins for iconic birds around the globe, from expanding reserves for species with fewer than 50 individuals left to supporting local fire-fighting teams that save endemic birds from climate-driven wildfires. Between 1989 and 2020, WLT supporters funded the direct protection of more than 900,000 ha (the size of Cyprus) around the world.
This then helped to connect more than 8.1 million protected hectares in the same period – a tract of threatened habitats the size of Scotland connected for wildlife, and all of it made possible because people came together for the planet we share.
This is the make-or-break decade to act on the climate and biodiversity crises. But the numbers above demonstrate the positive power of collective action and what has been achieved by everyone in the WLT movement – our conservation partners around the world and the supporters who make it all possible.
With patrons like Sir David Attenborough and Steve Backshall adding their voices to ours, together we have made a critical impact for habitats in Africa, Asia and South and Central America over the past three decades by focusing on our founding premise: save land, and everything else follows. Empower local people to do the saving, and everyone benefits.
This approach has allowed WLT to make a difference for an astounding trove of life around the world. Since 1989, our partners have recorded more than 9,768 species of flora and fauna on the reserves we’ve funded. Of those, 3,871 are bird species – more than 35% of the 10,000-11,000 total documented worldwide to date. When you join forces with local people to prioritise the saving of exactly the right habitats, every hectare benefits global biodiversity.
Birdwatch readers have already played a key part in this story. Since late 2020 alone, donations to WLT appeals from magazine subscribers have helped to save habitat for Ecuador’s Harpy Eagle, Tanzania’s African Pitta, Borneo’s
hornbills and 357 of Guatemala’s 800 resident and migratory bird species. Together we’ve come far for threatened birds and you can help us go even further – by becoming a WLT Friend to help us protect millions of hectares, and contributing regularly to the WLT programme that funds our partners’ most urgent projects: our Action Fund. What follows are stories of the impact you could make, with us, for incredible birdlife around the world.
Lifeline in the south
In a world under ever-growing threat, how can conservationists be ready to protect bird habitats from whatever comes next? Our Action Fund helps WLT partners deal with the unprecedented such as in 2021, when it funded a community fire brigade in Mexico that stopped wildfires from coming into habitats hosting the globally threatened, endemic Bearded Wood Partridge; or when it supported an urgent 122-ha expansion of a Colombian reserve home to the Critically Endangered Antioquia Brushfinch, a bird described from three museum specimens and only first seen in the wild in 2018.
For WLT and our partners, this flexibility makes the Action Fund a key approach for bringing some of the most threatened and important areas of land under protection. The ability to fund these most urgent projects supports
WLT’s main approach to conservation, in protecting irreplaceable – sites with species that occur nowhere else – and vulnerable – areas under high threat – habitats.
This approach prioritises our funding towards countries in the Global South, which have the highest biodiversity and greatest need for support; areas with the largest numbers of species with the smallest geographical ranges where action makes the biggest impact in preventing extinctions. These sites, boasting a high rarity-weighted species richness, are crucial for birds as well as a far wider range of biodiversity. Colombia’s Andean tropical cloudforests are an illustration of what these priority areas look like. Over the coming months donations to Action Fund will be funding a small but critical 30-ha expansion to our partner ProAves’s Ranita Dorada Amphibian Reserve, safeguarding some of the last tracts intact forest left in this region. Amphibians might be this project’s headline focus – Dotted Poison and Tolimense Poison Frogs, or the ‘ranitas’ (‘little frogs’ in Spanish) the reserve is named after – but Action Fund donors will also be protecting habitat for the endemic Yellow-headed Brushfinch and White-mantled Barbet, along with neotropical migrants like Cerulean Warbler. These and further species illustrate the impact of how WLT partners operate: the acquisition and protection of land that makes the most difference for biodiversity conservation. While the majority of WLT’s projects are focused in these highly threatened biodiverse areas of restricted-ranged species, we also support larger areas of intact natural ecosystems, taking a proactive approach to protecting these areas before they come under threat and safeguarding the wider-ranging species that they support.
Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park is an example of such a project, and what birds stand to gain when Action Fund supporters step in. Since last year, donations to our programme have been funding WLT partner Gorongosa Project’s plan to protect some 12,000 ha of miombo woodland from logging for timber, and supporting their far larger ‘Mangrove to Mountain’ vision for this landscape.
The list of bird species set to benefit from this conservation project reads like a raptor enthusiast’s dream. This expanse of forested savanna is home to the Critically Endangered Hooded, White-backed and White-headed
Vultures, as well as Endangered Martial, Tawny and Steppe Eagles, which share the Gorongosa skies with Southern Ground Hornbill, Grey Crowned
Crane, Madagascar Pond Heron and many others. For all, the addition of 12,000 ha to Gorongosa Project’s wider landscape represents a real chance for a better future.
Community-first benefits
WLT’s 30-plus years supporting our in-country conservation partners have taught us one thing: saving land is just the first step. In a deeply unequal world, conservation can only ever hope to succeed in the long run when it is led by – indeed, when it brings benefits to – local people.
With ProAves and all other partner projects WLT supports, the saving of habitats unlocks direct and indirect benefits for surrounding communities, from protected water sources to lockedin carbon. But it goes further than that. The Gorongosa project, for example, directly advances eight UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and it’s not just about Climate Action or Life on Land. The list also includes No Poverty, Clean Water and Decent Work and Economic Growth; all consistent with a project that will support Mozambique’s communities as they debate and approve plans to develop new, sustainable livelihoods that don’t cost the forest. Thousands of kilometres across the Indian Ocean, another project backed by donations to our Action Fund is also demonstrating how conservationists can marry the protection of birds with the championing of communities. In the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, our partner Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) has made local people the cornerstone
of a push to preserve wetland habitats crucial to Sarus Cranes.
The project’s nine direct SDG contributions range from empowering communities through training (Quality Education) to fostering participatory wetland management plans
(Reduced Inequalities) and protecting groundwater sources (Clean Water). Sarus Crane, a shallow water roamer identified by the tell-tale, mask-like red that crowns its slender grey neck and body, is loaded with symbolism. This is not just the world’s tallest flying bird, or India’s only breeding crane, it is also living proof of the price birds pay when wetlands fall to human pressure. The species’ decreasing population means it is now classed as Vulnerable, and it is projects like WTI’s that offer a chance to make Sarus Crane the symbol of something new: the story of how, with help from WLT supporters, Uttar’s Pradesh citizens joined in the protection of habitat for their state bird, and benefited as a result.
The part you can play
For those of us who care about the living planet, our work is cut out in this decade that will decide so much for the biodiversity and climate crises.
With the science of global conservation priorities guiding our every step, WLT, our partners and supporters will push on further for threatened habitats, remembering that as small as we may feel individually, we can make a difference by coming together and protecting land. Birdwatch readers have already proven a force for bird conservation through WLT and so they could remain in the coming years: by becoming the WLT Friend habitats need, joining those who have a made a difference for thousands of bird species in Africa, America, Asia and beyond. ■
How you can help
TO find out how you can give regularly to WLT’s Action Fund as a WLT Friend, go to: www. worldlandtrust.org/appeals/wlt-friends/.