Current research: Birds

Why birds?

Spoonbills on the nest

From the very start, birds have been close to the heart of A Rocha. When A Rocha was founded in 1983, one of its chief aims was the conservation of birds in Portugal. The location of the first field centre, Cruzinha, owes much to the area's importance for migrating birds.

Although birds are a relatively small component of the world's creatures, they have a high importance in conservation, for several reasons.

Birds are almost universal, often attractive and generally unmissable; as a result many people are fascinated by them. Even people who have no other interest in nature find birds appealing and many have found their environmental interests started with bird watching.
Many bird species migrate extraordinary distances each year and travel over many different countries. In this way, birds highlight the fact that environmental issues have an international dimension. After all, there is little point in protecting migrating birds as they breed in northern Europe if the environment in Africa where they over-winter is destroyed or they are shot on migration. Birds know no boundaries; neither does bird conservation.
Because they are highly mobile, birds are very sensitive indicators of problems affecting a local environment. When an environment is contaminated or damaged, birds soon move on. Abundant and diverse bird populations are good indicators of healthy environments.
Because birds have been well studied for centuries, there is a great deal of information on them. In some countries, records on the abundance of particular bird species may go back hundreds of years.
Because of the global interest in birds, bird rich areas are often the centres for ecological tourism. In terms of economics, bird conservation often pays for itself.

Black-winged Stilt with eggs

Everywhere that A Rocha works, birds are studied as either a major or subsidiary part of a conservation program. The choice of a flock of terns as the A Rocha emblem is no accident.

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Jesus said "Look at the birds. They don't need to plant or harvest or put food in barns because your heavenly Father feeds them. And you are far more valuable to him than they are."

Matthew 6:25-27, NLT.