Territories of Life

Conserva Aves is the protection of territories of life. It is an innovative, bold, and visionary conservation initiative with medium and long-term goals to benefit threatened, endemic and migratory birds and their habitats throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

It is an inclusive strategy for conservation and the fight against climate change through a strategy of protected areas for the benefit of birds, biodiversity, and of present and future generations.

Conserva Aves will promote the creation, consolidation, management, and strengthening of 100 or more new local strategic protected regional, municipal, ethnic and private territories at the subnational level. Two million hectares and nine Latin American countries will be at the center of this initiative (Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, and Chile) to be implemented between 2022 and 2028.

One of its main pillars is the active engagement of civil, public, and private stakeholders to work together in the sustainable management of subnational protected areas. This approach will also enhance at least two million hectares of protected areas.

Conserva Aves focuses on priority places for the conservation of globally and nationally threatened resident and migratory bird species, including forests, grasslands, wetlands, and other habitats. These sites are not only crucial for the breeding, feeding, and resting of birds, but they are also home to one of the highest levels of biodiversity on Earth.

Protected areas are an effective strategy for conservation, as well as mitigation, and adaptation to climate change, ensuring a great return on investment. The proper management of these geographical spaces allows linking scientific research, long-term preservation of ecosystems, biodiversity, environmental services, cultural values, awareness, environmental education, tourism, and recreation, among others.

Conserva Aves is led by American Bird Conservancy, Audubon, BirdLife International, and the Red de Fondos Ambientales en Latinoamérica y el Caribe (RedLAC). Together they seek to promote climate resilience and sustainable development and consolidate strategic knowledge and experience crucial to implementing and scaling this initiative for the benefit of life.  

American Bird Conservancy is an organization devoted to conserving wild birds and their habitats throughout the American continent. It addresses the most significant issues faced by birds today by innovating and harnessing advances in science to halt species extinction, protect habitats, eliminate threats, and build capacity for bird conservation. It is a member of BirdLife International in the USA.

Audubon’s mission is to preserve and restore natural ecosystems, focusing on birds, their habitats, and other living beings in the hemisphere to benefit humanity and the Earth’s biodiversity. Founded in 1905 in the United States, it is one of the oldest non-profit conservation organizations in the world. It is a member of BirdLife International in the USA.

BirdLife International is the oldest and largest international alliance for the conservation of nature on the planet. It has 119 partners globally who work with passion and commitment under a local approach with a global impact to protect birds, their habitats, biodiversity, and people. It has six regional offices (Quito, Brussels, Amman, Nairobi, Singapore, and Suva) and a global office in Cambridge, UK.

RedLAC promotes relations among environmental funds of Latin America and the Caribbean and provides an effective system for learning, capacity building, training, and cooperation. Currently, RedLAC has 27 member funds from 20 countries in the region. This community of environmental funds strengthens its members’ capacities to achieve environmental conservation and sustainable development. RedLAC members are leaders in developing financial mechanisms and generating measurable impacts at a local, regional and global scale.

Conserva Aves takes inspiration from Conserva Colombia, a program developed between 2009 and 2017 to promote and facilitate the creation of protected areas in underrepresented ecosystems in the country. The program successfully created 95 new protected areas in Colombia. 

Conserva Aves enhances, adapts, and scales this strategy at the hemispheric level. Its innovative approach to conservation has gained the support of different funds. With USD 14 million of seed, it will aim at protecting the Tropical Andes’s biological, environmental and cultural wealth.

Thanks to their practically global distribution and their extraordinary sensitivity to changes in their environment, birds are excellent bioindicators of the health status of nature. In addition, they are guardians of life, and by protecting them, we guarantee the conservation of many other plant and animal species.

Throughout the entire hemisphere, there are eight main bird migration routes. Unfortunately, there are conservation gaps or unprotected areas along these routes, endangering more than 2,000 bird species. The main threats in these unprotected territories come from human activities that cause habitat destruction and change land use.

Nearly 11% of the birds of the Tropical Andes are under some degree of threat. Rapid, scalable, and practical actions must be implemented to safeguard this biological, cultural, and economic heritage. For this reason, Conserva Aves will focus on priority places for the conservation of birds and biodiversity in this strategic region.

The commitment from two key stakeholders: 

From the business and industry sectors, commitment and responsibility through donations to increase the number of protected areas. 

And from NGOs, community, and environmental organizations: experience, technical capacity, and the availability of at least 100 hectares to facilitate the development of effective and sustainable protected area conservation projects.

Conserva Aves is an initiative open to public and private institutions and community or civil society organizations. They can invest resources or structure sustainable projects aimed at subnational protected areas with a four-year projection.

Each country will have an open call for proposals. These projects will cover public, communal, and private lands. Committees will choose them through an evaluation process with structured technical and financial criteria. National partners will be in charge of managing and verifying the technical feasibility and sustainability of the conservation proposals.

The national partners of the initiative will collect information on the progress and impacts of the projects to:

• Learn from experiences and improve practices.
• Guarantee accountability for the resources used and the results obtained.
• Guide decisions regarding the future of the initiative.
• Promote the empowerment of the initiative beneficiaries.