By Fran Gillespie
Special Correspondent
Birdlife International has announced its Flyways campaign, Born to Travel, which will be launched tomorrow. The aim of the campaign is to get international organisations to work together to help the world’s waterbirds, which are suffering badly from loss of habitat, pollution and other related causes.
Birdlife International is a global partnership of conservation organisations striving to conserve birds, their habitats and global biodiversity, and working with people towards sustainability in the use of natural resources. Together with its partners, the organisation operates in over 100 countries and territories worldwide.
Birds are vital environmental indicators, and by focusing on birds, and the sites and habitats on which they depend, BirdLife is working to improve the quality of life for birds, for other wildlife, and for people.
Its aims are to prevent the extinction of any threatened bird species, to maintain and improve the conservation status of all bird species, to conserve and improve and enlarge sites and habitats important for birds, and to integrate bird conservation into sustaining people’s livelihoods.
Here in Qatar, the Friends of the Environment Center (FEC), whose chairman is Dr Saif al Hajiri, is an officially affiliated partner of Birdlife International.
At the FEC, Dr Elsadig Bashir, executive director of the Qatar Bird Project, explained to Gulf Times that the project’s aim was to make a comprehensive survey of all birds in the country, both migratory and resident, for conservation and educational purposes.
Dr Bashir added that the project would assist and promote Birdlife International’s Flyways campaign through increasing public awareness, particularly among young people.
In November 2008, in South Korea at a wetlands conference, a resolution was passed which recognised the importance of international co-operation for the conservation of migratory waterbirds and their habitats.
At the conference, Birdlife’s head of conservation, Richard Grimmett, said, “waterbird populations around the world are continuing to decline as a result of the loss and degradation of wetland habitats and their unsustainable exploitation. This resolution recognises the crucial fact that conserving the world’s waterbirds is an international challenge. Only by working together along flyways can we effectively conserve our migratory birds.”
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