Motto | Partnership for Nature and People |
---|---|
Formation | 1922 |
Type | INGO |
Purpose | Conservation |
Headquarters | Cambridge, United Kingdom |
Region served
|
Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe and Central Asia, Pacific |
Chairman
|
Khaled Anis Irani |
Chief executive
|
Patricia Zurita |
Website | www |
Formerly called
|
International Council for Bird Preservation |
BirdLife International (formerly the International Council for Bird Preservation) is a global partnership of conservation organisations that strives to conserve birds, their habitats and global biodiversity, working with people towards sustainability in the use of natural resources. It is the world's largest partnership of conservation organisations, with over 120 partner organisations.
BirdLife International was founded as in 1922 the International Council for Bird Preservation by American ornithologists T. Gilbert Pearson and Jean Theodore Delacour. It changed its name in 1993 to "BirdLife International".
BirdLife International has conservation work programmes in the following parts of the world, which it describes as "regions" - Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Central Asia, the Middle East and the Pacific.
There are about 120 regional partners of BirdLife International, including:
Within each of these regions, BirdLife has nine programmes - some are well established, others are more recent and responding to specific conservation issues. In addition to the regional programmes, there are "global" programmes, not specific to a region. Together these programmes help the partnership to focus and work on common priorities. They provide the framework for planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating conservation work. BirdLife programmes are; the Seabird and Marine Programme, the Birdlife Preventing Extinctions Programme, the Migratory Birds and Flyways Programme, the Climate Change Programme, the Forests of Hope Programme, the Local Empowerment Programme, the Invasive Alien Species Programme and the Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas Programme.
BirdLife International publishes a quarterly magazine, World Birdwatch, which contains recent news and authoritative articles about birds, their habitats, and their conservation around the world.
BirdLife International is the official Red List authority for birds, for the International Union for Conservation of Nature. In the 2012 assessment, 1,313 species of birds are considered threatened with extinction (in the categories of critically endangered, endangered or vulnerable). This represents 13% of the 10,064 extant bird species in the world.