Thriving Birds Depend on Healthy Habitats
To protect the birds we love, we must identify and protect the most critical places for birds everywhere they fly. This means working to conserve and improve habitats for birds across their full annual life cycle, including in Canada and Latin America.
©Thick-billed MurresPhoto: Graham Sorenson
©Thick-billed MurresPhoto: Graham Sorenson
Conserving important places for birds is about both scale and strategy—protecting the habitats that provide food, water, shelter, and safe places to breed, rest, and survive.
Guided by science, we focus conservation efforts where they can have the greatest and most lasting impact. These include Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs), Ramsar Wetlands of International Importance, Migratory Bird Sanctuaries, and critical habitat for Species at Risk.
Across an Annual Cycle
©Sable Island, Nova ScotiaPhoto: Nicole Harrington
Birds Canada plays a leading role in identifying Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs), places of major importance for birds and nature, where conservation can have the greatest and most lasting impact.
Long Point, Ontario, is recognized as a globally significant KBA. Birds Canada helps steward important ecosystems here, supporting one of North America’s most significant migratory bird stopover sites.
©Long Point, OntarioPhoto: Mark Conboy
We work with volunteers and collaborators to restore, enhance, and steward habitats that birds rely on for breeding, migration and survival. From forests and shorelines to wetlands and grasslands, local conservation efforts help keep important places healthy for birds.
Birds Canada is helping conserve one of Canada's most threatened habitats by working with ranchers to keep native grasslands bird-friendly.
©Grasslands National Park, SKPhoto: Nicholas Ypelaar
Guided by science, we work with landowners, governments, Indigenous communities and conservation organizations to identify and secure long-term protection for the habitats birds need throughout their annual life cycles.
In Atlantic Canada, we are advocating to all levels of government for the protection of the Chignecto Isthmus, an ecological corridor that provides vital stopover sites for shorebirds.
©Semipalmated SandpiperPhoto: Andrew Mactavish
We work alongside Indigenous collaborators to advance community-led conservation and stewardship that reflects local priorities, knowledge systems and long-term care for important places.
Providing data and exchanging knowledge with Mushkegowuk Council in Northern Ontario, through our Science in the North Program, in support of the Indigenous co-led National Marine Conservation Area (NMCA) in James Bay (Weeneebeg) and additional First Nation led protected area projects.
©KashechewanPhoto: Cléa Frapin
Through the Conserva Aves initiative, Birds Canada is supporting the conservation of critical bird habitat across Latin America through locally led stewardship, sustainable solutions, and long-term protection. To date, Birds Canada has contributed to conservation efforts across seven Latin American countries—Mexico, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru—helping advance protection for more than 195,000 hectares of important habitat, with work continuing to expand across the region.
Through Conserva Aves, we work alongside organizations and communities across Latin America and the Caribbean to support locally led conservation, helping protect critical habitats for threatened endemic and migratory birds while building long-term resilience for nature and people.
©Archidona, EcuadorPhoto: Karen Toro/Birdlife International
Birds Canada’s staff and volunteers are hard at work organizing the deployment and retrieval of new ARUs with partners and collaborators across Canada, in known and remote locations, to reveal the secrets of avian life.
This spring, Birds Canada was proud to not only be invited back to both Cree territory along the shores of Wiiniibek (James Bay) and Nunatsiavut in northern Labrador, but also for the first time to NunatuKavut in southern Labrador, to install new Motus Wildlife Tracking System stations. This work integrates two major five-year initiatives that Birds Canada is embarking on: Science in the North and Motus on the Move.
The Prairies, with their rich biodiversity, make up one of the most important ecosystems for birds in North America. This article is the first installment in a three-part series exploring the connections between the Canadian Prairies, prairie producers, and birds.