Title of our goal

Bird Survey at La Hondura Canyon (Santander, Colombia)

Objectives

Our objective is to carry out a bird survey that will support an application to designate the study area as a Civil Society Natural Reserve. This research is aimed to be conducted as a participatory process, involving local communities to make a co-design of activities possible, also to enrich the project's goal. And to scale it further into an environmental education and a bird tourism initiative, integrating locals (with nearby school children) for shared benefits out of all that effort.

We are aiming to identify bird species´ composition in the study area by direct observation, acoustic and trap camera recordings. Besides, this study will contribute to get a wider image of the area’s general biodiversity composition (particularly mammals, and amphibians), aiming to articulate our findings with already existing information in the region (i.e. Santander Bio, or National Parks own information in that area of the country - details of this can be seen in our website here).

Contribution to wildlife conservation

First, we are convinced that our project can provide valuable information to understand the area between two national parks. For which, there might be a national interest towards large scale projects aiming to better protect biological corridors or even increase the scope of our national protected areas to include their influence regions.

Second, by creating a Private Natural Reserve based on data collected by this research, we believe that this could represent a clear example on how communities can commit to conservation interests that are, and should be, clearly not only of a governmental interest. Hence, we are aiming to contribute and “do our bit” in terms of community commitment to expand wildlife conservation.