NATURE WORLDWIDE: BIRDS

WORLD INSTITUTE FOR CONSERVATION & ENVIRONMENT, WICE

BIRDS AND CONSERVATION

Nature organizations are the single most important force driving the conservation movement in North America and Europe, and increasingly in developing countries as well. Nature organizations may differ greatly in their objectives: Some organizations bring people together who love to study and enjoy nature, such as bird organizations, like the Royal Society for the protection of Birds in the UK, Vogelbescherming in the Netherlands, the Sociedad Española de Ornitología, the Naturschutz Bund Deutschland, different Ornithologische Vereinigungen in Deutschland, Audubon Society and the Sierra Club in the USA, lots of botanical societies all over the world, etc. Given the passion of their members, most of these organizations also promote nature conservation in different ways, like organizing field trips, promoting love and concern for nature through educational programmes and through political lobbying. 

Other organizations promote concern for conservation of nature or of the environment in general. However, the European and North-American conservation experience has taught us, that the larges conservation organizations are those that promote active enjoyment of nature and that help nature friends to go into the field and build friendships among each other. Among the nature friends, we see that birdwatchers often are the most active and enthusiastic people to go out into nature. Birders keep their own lifetime lists of birds and jointly they maintain bird lists for regions and countries. 

Birdwatchers in the developed world are also some of the most active travelers to developing countries to expand their own birdlist and to get to know completely different avifaunas of countries far away from their homes. When traveling to another country to go birding, these birdwatchers love to have access to the birds list of the country of their visit. In many cases, it also is very difficult for them to find the national parks and nature reserves where they can go on a birding. Travel to developing countries requires proper preparation and it is difficult to find the really good places, like birding hotspots, great areas for trekking, backpacking, rafting, canoeing, biking and other forms of ecotourism.  

In developing countries, we see a dramatic problem that there are many national parks and nature reserves that are under appreciated. Many of them hardly ever are visited, because there is little information about them, even less information on how to get to them and where to stay once you know that they exist. This leads to the situation that local populations see little benefit in the conservation coming from those protected areas. In Africa, the protected areas are the few places left with abundant wildlife and poachers like to go in and hunt the protected animals. In many countries, landless farmers settle in protected areas and cut themselves a little farm field from the forest. Worldwide, we have seen that visitation of protected areas - ecotourism - is one of the most effective ways to promote acceptance of and respect for protected areas among local inhabitants, as ecotourism creates employment. 

Based on its decades of work in developing countries, WICE has come to the conclusion that visitation of protected areas is indispensable for their conservation. Areas with little or no visitation are under far greater pressure than those that enjoy significant visitation. Over the years it has sought for ways of promoting interest in protected areas in developing and transition countries.  In 1996, WICE director Daan Vreugdenhil was attending a training course in computering and internet, and one of his instructors showed a website that - at the time - had some of the heaviest traffic on the internet. So he thought, how he could put that knowledge to use for promoting visitation to protected areas. He got the idea, that if he could get the attention of the most enthusiastic nature travelers, the birdwatchers, then he could help them find those areas and thus contribute to their conservation by having those birdwatchers visit those those protected areas. Knowing that birders want the national checklist of the birds of the country they are going to visit, he figured that he could get their attention by providing the national bird list of every country of the world in one website. Once having their attention, the website could then show them information on the protected areas of all the countries of the world and eventually ways on how to visit them. As no site on the internet provided such information, the information on the distribution of birds would have to be entered from different sources, particularly bird guides of different regions of the world. WICE started hiring a team of students and young graduates in different parts of the world, and the first avibase or birdbase in the world was born. WICE acquired the domain names thhp://www.birdlist.org and http://www.birdlist.com, http://avibase.org, http://birdbase.org  and over the years more countries were getting their bird list listed on the internet.     

Although, some countries are still missing, we can proudly say that we currently cover about 80% of the countries of the world and 90% of the world's land mass.  We know that our lists are not yet complete and usually based on potential distribution rather than confirmed observations, but we continuously get emails with corrections and official up-to-date bird lists.

Once WICE had the bird lists of most countries of the world, we did not stop there.  We started collecting national checklists of mammals, thus creation the world's first mammalbase, for which we acquired the domain name http://www.mammalbase.org. The lists of protected areas by country already existed from the World Commission on protected Areas, (WCMC) of the United Nations Environment Programme, (UNEP), and we started publishing those lists in combination with our bird lists and mammal lists. Other lists were the lists of Man and Biosphere Reserves, and the World Heritage Sites and wetlands of RAMSAR SITES. This information has been entered in the WICE databases and is currently updated to be made available in easily accessible format so that people worldwide can get convenient access to that information to properly prepare themselves for their intended nature travel. WICE has not yet started to work on Amphibians, Reptiles, fishes and butterflies, or coral reefs, for lack of funding.

We also list large numbers of links to ecotourism operators, both on our world wide list for world wide operators, and on our country pages, for national tour operators. Often, ecotourism operators limit their standard packages, and we hope that by providing information on national parks, that an informed group of ecotravelers and ecotourism operators, gradually move towards a better use of the crown-jewels of conservation, the national parks, Biosphere Reserves and World Heritage Sites. One country at the time, WICE will provide you more and better information on national parks and protected areas anywhere in the world, so that YOU may enjoy the miracles of this planet and through your responsible visit, help conserve them.

As you have seen, Nature Worldwide at www.birdlist.org is not only about birding.  It is about conservation. We are working at checklist of many other critters that have passionate groups of watchers: mammals, butterflies and corals.  But all those animals need a home.  We believe that protected areas and particularly National Parks are the only places where we can offer nature some shelter from ultimate destruction.  We provide information about them, because we feel that when national parks are visited, they will be more appreciated and thereby protected.  They may also generate income for local people, which may release the pressure to cut down their forests.  A bit at the time we will tell you more about them.  So Keep following our progress.  

Happy birding!  Enjoy nature and join us in our effort to protect the national parks and nature reserves of the world.

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