BirdsPlus

Latin America and the Caribbean — a region home to more than 50 percent of Earth’s biodiversity — has experienced the greatest decline in biodiversity of any place on the planet. In just five decades, more than 90 percent of the region’s wildlife abundance has been lost. Protecting biodiversity requires bold action, innovation, and creativity. That’s where BirdsPlus comes in.

ABC’s BirdsPlus program incentivizes and catalyzes farmers, ranchers, and companies in Latin America and the Caribbean to adopt best management practices that restore land and maintain habitat standards so bird populations can thrive. Companies, local communities, and owners of working lands can connect to finance and markets, unlocking funding streams to begin or scale up habitat conservation and restoration for birds like the Wood Thrush and Golden-winged Warbler, as well as other wildlife.

BirdsPlus helps working lands do more for people and birds alike. Such is the case in Costa Rica, where a sustainable rubber plantation, with the support of BirdsPlus, is enhancing degraded grazing lands and connecting forest patches for birds. Eventually, these lands will produce the rubber used to create everything from tires to tennis balls — a win-win situation for investors and those working the land.

Their success will be a win for birds, too, a return on investment for birds we can quantify using the BirdsPlus Index. Harnessing the power of birdsong and cutting-edge technology, the Index creates a picture of an area’s changing biodiversity over time, giving researchers, landowners, and investors insight into how these working lands are working for birds.

The backbone of our BirdsPlus program is our set of best management practices, a series of science-backed recommendations that help ensure the working landscapes we invest in will generate a win-win-win scenario for land managers, biodiversity, and investors. The program promotes and catalyzes the adoption of these practices among farmers, ranchers, and other producers.

Our best management practices for crops, including coffee, cardamom, black pepper, and rubber, as well as cattle grazing, help land managers transition from single-crop systems to those that incorporate more native trees and other plants. Mixing native trees with crops, creating “living fences” (using trees rather than fence posts) on cattle grazing land, or practicing rotational grazing can provide greatly needed habitat for birds.

With crops growing alongside beneficial native plants, farms can produce profitable crops while maintaining habitat for migratory birds and other wildlife. These and other recommended best practices meet the needs of farmers and their communities, while restoring, maintaining, and enhancing habitat to slow bird population declines and recover struggling populations. In a landscape that has been radically altered by unsustainable clear-cutting of forests and monoculture farming, growers and ranchers can make their land an oasis for birds in what is otherwise an ecological desert. Shade agroforestry can also reduce the need for pesticides.

The BirdsPlus program works hand in hand with farmers, ranchers, and producers in Latin America and the Caribbean. A series of Spanish-language infographics and three-minute videos describing the best farming and ranching practices — easily shared over the region’s farmers’ main communication channel, WhatsApp — provide an accessible way for producers to learn how they can implement bird-friendly practices on their land.

Biodiversity is facing staggering losses. Globally, wildlife populations have declined by more than 70 percent since 1970. In Latin America and the Caribbean — some of the most biodiverse places on the planet — the losses have been even more severe, with an estimated 90 percent average wildlife population decline. The need for conservation has never been greater. ABC’s BirdsPlus Investments work is helping to bridge that gap by connecting companies and investors with high-impact conservation projects that meet sustainability goals and generate returns for investors and communities.

Investors and companies can support bird-friendly management on working lands through BirdsPlus Investments, empowering farmers and ranchers in Latin America and the Caribbean to scale up habitat conservation and restoration projects. Through the BirdsPlus Revolving Fund, ABC provides catalytic capital to bird-friendly businesses in Latin America and the Caribbean to scale Best Management Practices, mitigate risk, and demonstrate that bird conservation is a great way to invest and do business. ABC offers support for portfolio companies, including flexible capital and technical assistance. The revolving fund allows donors to compound the impact of their dollars as project investments are returned and reinvested in new work on the ground.

With access to funding streams and support from ABC and our partners, farmers are planting shade trees on cacao and coffee farms, producing shade-grown cardamom on formerly degraded grazing pasturelands, and connecting forest patches with native hardwood trees on a sustainable rubber plantation.

Early BirdsPlus pilot projects are already turning profits, and this return on investment supports local communities and furthers the work of improving habitat for species like the Wood Thrush and Kentucky Warbler. Our BirdsPlus Index makes it possible to measure the changing biodiversity in these habitats. Investing in bird-friendly management practices generates benefits for birds, nature, and people.

Birds can be incredible indicators of biodiversity — they’re everywhere. Birds are one of the most well-studied vertebrate groups on Earth. They’re conspicuous, announcing their presence with distinct, recognizable calls. They interact with other elements of the ecosystems they occupy, often have specialized habitat requirements, and are highly sensitive to changes in the environment. Just by going about their lives, birds are always telling us something.

Now we have a new way to listen. ABC’s BirdsPlus Index harnesses the power of birdsong, using recorders paired with artificial intelligence (AI) to identify species-specific vocalizations. We can “eavesdrop” on birds, layering what we hear on top of remote sensing data and critical ecological data on the species themselves to gain exceptional insight into the biodiversity of a given area.

Measuring biodiversity — counting birds and other species — has historically been expensive, time-intensive, and challenging. The BirdsPlus Index makes the work of assessing the ecological health of a habitat simpler, less expensive, and more accessible.

Using the index, we can identify what conservation actions are producing results on working lands throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, where landowners are enacting bird-friendly best management practices. Over time, we can directly measure the increased conservation value of investments, such as planting trees and other management practices, or compare the conservation value of a particular site, like a coffee farm or cattle ranch, with other sites with different management practices.