CONTRIBUTION
The Migratory Shorebird Project began in 2011 as a network of organizations devoted to making scientific counts of shorebirds along their flyways. Fourteen years later, it brings together organizations from the 11 Latin American countries with Pacific coastlines, from Mexico to Chile, and serves as a key support for the birds’ conservation and for the communities living around the ecosystems that sustain them.
When Luis Fernando Castillo was studying Seabird and Shorebird Ecology at the Universidad del Valle (Colombia), he and other students formed a group to band and release the migratory birds stopping over on Colombian beaches, in the hope that their efforts would help towards a better knowledge of the animals’ behavior. “Back then,” he recalls, “the study of shorebirds was a new thing. But we were excited to think that what we were doing was part of a far bigger exercise, and that our beach was part of a chain linking Alaska to Patagonia.”
The group would shortly form itself into the Asociación Calidris, which Castillo now heads. And given the migratory nature of the birds, it quickly joined forces with similar initiatives in other countries. With the support of the U.S. Forest Service, they came up with a monitoring project that would take in the whole region the birds traveled. Little by little, more countries came on board and, as of 2019, the project encompasses Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico, along with organizations in the two North American Pacific countries, the United States and Canada.
Bird counts identified human activities that might threaten their survival, so the network started to engage directly in conservation activities. “People who are enjoying themselves on the beach sometimes think their behavior is harmless,” explains Diana Lucía Eusse, a Calidris researcher and the project’s coordinator. “A key resource to mitigate this impact has been bird festivals, which have been hugely effective in teaching people in a fun way about the importance of birds,” she continues. “And we have also worked with real estate developers to create exclusion zones at certain times of the year so the beach space is shared between birds and humans.”
In this and many other cases, the network has found that conserving birds means involving people: “That’s very much the story of Calidris,” Castillo relates; “the progression from counting birds to thinking about how you can work with people and address their needs.” Eusse expands on this point: “In Colombia and elsewhere in Latin America, biodiverse sites are shared by people who may be facing complex situations in terms of physical, educational and health capital. And sometimes, as working biologists, we can reach places no one else can get to. Bird conservation is also about strengthening the agency of local communities, because when you work with communities, nature feels the benefit.”
The network has also forged links with salt and shrimp producers in a number of countries, resulting in recommendations to establish water levels in salt and shrimp ponds that allow passing birds to rest and feed there. But the real key to getting these recommendations put into practice has been to stress the economic benefits they bring to producers; in terms of corporate image but also through the birds’ usefulness as quality indicators – their presence or rather absence may indicate that ponds are in poor condition and need intervention. “This has been one of our great lessons as conservationists,” Eusse reflects. “The goal is not to make money out of everything. Rather to be truly successful you need to talk in terms of sustainable production.”
One of the day-to-day challenges the network faces is the huge diversity of its member organizations: “Each country’s reality is different, the political and economic situation, the inhabitants…. So it’s vital that we address the needs and particularities of each place,” Castillo observes. For him, frequent meetings and the ability to listen are vital in this regard. As is the network’s insistence that the work is done locally. In this respect, “the project has been a way of positioning Latin America and advertising the fact that we have people here who are highly qualified.”
Photo credit: with permission from Asociación Calidris