The Spirit of BirdLife – BirdLife International

By Shaun Hurrell
Header graphic: With its pole-to pole migration, the Arctic Tern is a image of BirdLife’s global collaboration © Agami/Shutterstock

Each and every organisation has milestone moments that mark when its ideas very first took flight, and BirdLife is no exception. Some may perhaps dwell on as golden anecdotes in the reminiscences of long-term personnel who have noticed motion on the frontline of conservation, but others may possibly now only be documented in old newspapers and heritage publications – but even the foreword of the Handbook of the Birds of the Environment, a total 62 webpages that narrate the development of BirdLife “from a council of experts to everybody’s world partnership”, does not pretty capture all of BirdLife’s historical past.

Previous concern we informed the tale of how BirdLife was born just a single century back. Back then, the visionary conservationists that came jointly to observed the Worldwide Committee for Hen Preservation (ICBP) could not have quite imagined the worldwide motion BirdLife would develop into and what it would realize for birds, habitats and individuals. BirdLife’s conservation do the job currently can be split into four pillars: species, web pages, techniques and modern society – essential approaches to preserving mother nature that have been the heart and soul of our conservation get the job done given that 1922.

Fundamental these are the principles that conservation motion ought to be informed by scientific perception, and that birds see no borders – hence international collaboration is key to their protection. And so above the years BirdLife has perfected the art of area-to-world wide effect with a suite of extraordinary assignments and programmes that perform to a eyesight of a earth in harmony with character.

Some flagship achievements stand out in this ever-evolving tale, including BirdLife’s initial land acquisition in Seychelles, the development of the European Union’s Natura 2000 network (which was in considerable section dependent on BirdLife’s inventories of Critical Hen & Biodiversity Locations, or IBAs), the launch of the Protecting against Extinctions Programme and its pivotal tasks to help you save species, the creation of the Albatross Process Power as a reaction to seabirds drowning in fishing gear, and the establishment of completely new NGOs such as Asity Madagascar, Burung Indonesia, Help you save Brasil and NatureLife Cambodia, thanks to our capacity developing perform. It would be extremely hard to point out all of BirdLife’s best times, so here are just a couple of that actually seize the aforementioned principles, or the ‘spirit’ of the organisation.