On the 15th of April, 2018, our partners at Aves y Conservación/BirdLife en Ecuador (“Birds and Conservation”/ BirdLife in Ecuador) launched the Ecuador Shorebird Conservation Plan during the country’s second ever Shorebird Festival. The event took place in the Coastal Marine Reserve at the tip of the Santa Elena Peninsula, at the scenic point known as “La Chocolatera.” The landscape provided the perfect scenery to celebrate the milestone of completing the Shorebird Conservation Plan. Present at the event were Tarsicio Granizo, Ecuador’s Minister of the Environment, Rob Clay, Director of the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network (WHSRN) Executive Office, and Esteban Lasso, Regional Director of the BirdLife Secretariat in the Americas. The directors of many other partner organizations also participated, from Aves y Conservación, Asociación Calidris of Colombia, Point Blue Conservation Science of California, and the United States Forest Service, among various other local and national authorities.
The Ecuador Shorebird Conservation Plan will serve as the guiding document for the conservation of shorebirds and their habitats, and as a framework for national action through the involvement of diverse actors across many sectors – public, private, and citizens interested in and committed to conservation. The process of writing the plan was coordinated by our partners at Aves y Conservación and led by expert Ana Agreda, with technical support from the WHSRN Executive Office through Conservation Specialist Diego Luna Quevedo. The plan has the technical endorsement of the Ministry of the Environment of Ecuador.
Left: The panel of experts during the public launch of Ecuador’s Shorebird Conservation Plan. Right: Tarsicio Granizo, Ecuador’s Minister of the Environment, supporting shorebird conservation! Photos: Aves y Conservación.
The process of creating the plan required a multi-sector participative process, directly involving experts and managers from critical areas for shorebirds. There have been 59 species of shorebirds recorded in Ecuador, and a total of 68 important shorebird sites – nine of which meet the biological criteria to qualify as potential WHSRN sites.
Ana Agreda (Aves y Conservacion) and Diana Eusse (Asociación Calidris) at the Shorebird Conservation Plan booth. Photo: Aves y Conservación.
To learn more about the Shorebird Festival of Ecuador, visit:
http://avesconservacion.org/web/conoce-todo-sobre-el-ii-festival-de-aves-playeras/
To download the full Ecuador Shorebird Conservation Plan, click here.
