Mexbirds, sustainable development through birding. El Cielo Emblematic Park
.jpg)
El Cielo Biosphere Reserve is located in Northeast Mexico; it consists of four ecosystems and contains the northernmost cloud forest in the American continent. El Cielo has close to 400 species of birds, 150 of which find their northernmost range in this area.
Mexbirds started a project to promote sustainable development though birding in 2003. Financially supported by Tamaulipas State government and other funds from federal government and NGOs, we have carried out diagnosis, training of locals as bird and butterfly watching guides and organized ALL INCLUSIVE package tours departing from the Texas Valley since 2005.
We invite you to participate in one of our events and contribute to sustainable development of the area.
Mexbirds’s work has been consolidated through “El Cielo Emblematic Park Project” ECEPP launched by Tamaulipas’s State Government in 2007. This political will has enabled the synergy of efforts for sustainable development of the area through the participation of different government agencies at the local, state and federal government level; Educational institutions, NGO´s, private initiative and local campesino groups. Birding and butterfly watching has increased the income received by locals and improved their quality of life as well as promoted conservation.
Your idea
This will be the address used to plot your entry on the map.
Street Address
Domicilio Conocido
City
Gomez Farias
State/Province
Tamaulipas
Postal/Zip Code
89780
Country
Mexico
Year innovation began
2003
Geotourism Challenge Addressed by Entrant
Quality of benefit to the people of the desitination
Place your video embed code here from YouTube, Google Video and other video sharing websites. How to embed a video from YouTube.
Indicate sector in which you principally work
Tourism-related business
Geographic location
Rural, Mountain.
Plot your innovation within the Mosaic of Solutions
Main insight addressed
Develop community assets
Name Your Project
Mexbirds, sustainable development through birding. El Cielo Emblematic Park
Describe Your Idea
El Cielo Biosphere Reserve is located in Northeast Mexico; it consists of four ecosystems and contains the northernmost cloud forest in the American continent. El Cielo has close to 400 species of birds, 150 of which find their northernmost range in this area.
Mexbirds started a project to promote sustainable development though birding in 2003. Financially supported by Tamaulipas State government and other funds from federal government and NGOs, we have carried out diagnosis, training of locals as bird and butterfly watching guides and organized ALL INCLUSIVE package tours departing from the Texas Valley since 2005.
We invite you to participate in one of our events and contribute to sustainable development of the area.
Mexbirds’s work has been consolidated through “El Cielo Emblematic Park Project” ECEPP launched by Tamaulipas’s State Government in 2007. This political will has enabled the synergy of efforts for sustainable development of the area through the participation of different government agencies at the local, state and federal government level; Educational institutions, NGO´s, private initiative and local campesino groups. Birding and butterfly watching has increased the income received by locals and improved their quality of life as well as promoted conservation.
Innovation
What is the goal of your innovation?
Sustainable development though bird and butterfly watching tourism in El Cielo Biosphere Reserve (pilot project) and rural areas of Mexico.
How does your approach support or embody geotourism?
Mexbirds’s concept of Sustainable development is composed by 3 “C”s that create a strong synergy between them:
1) Conservation; involves laws, norms and regulations.
2) Conscience; environmental education and awareness about the importance of conservation.
3) Community; encourage economic activities that are in accordance with sustainable development and benefit locals.
Involvement from Private initiative, Society, Government, Universities, NGOs, and local “Campesino” groups has been achieved. All have joint efforts with a common goal in mind in order to achieve Sustainable development. Political Will has played a key role in making things happen.
We chose El Cielo Biosphere Reserve for our pilot project in 2003 because there was a need for economic alternatives for local inhabitants and because biodiversity included four ecosystems: Cloud forest, Tropical Jungle, Pine-Oak forest and Dessert scrub.
Mexbirds started organizing and promoting nature festivals in 2005. Local guides were not skilled enough at the time so we invited volunteer international Trip Leaders that handle visitors. Locals have developed their birding and English skills through their interaction with birders to the point that now they are often hired as guides by visitors as well as during our festivals. The experience has been enriching for visitors and locals alike.
Describe your approach in detail. How is it innovative?
El Cielo was a logging area until it was declared a Biosphere Reserve by the Tamaulipas government in 1985. UNESCO recognized it through their Man and the Biosphere Programme in 1987. (Recognizing the need to reconcile conservation of biodiversity with economic development).
Mexbirds’s Sustainable development through birding project started in 2003. It has included: diagnosis of birding potential; training of local inhabitants as birding and butterfly watching guides; involvement of local women though training programs that taught them to embroider birds and butterflies on souvenirs; children have participated in various environmental education activities. Promotion of Nature Festivals, design and distribution of a "Biding and Butterfly Watching Map" has brought nature lovers to the area.
Income received by locals from birders and butterfly watchers is significantly greater than that received through traditional hiker/campers. It is also greater than the income a local can make form the collection of "palmilla", which is the main economic activity besides tourism.
Working as bird and butterfly watching guides makes locals feel proud of themselves, increasing their self-esteem. It also encourages them to value nature and want to conserve it.
Mexbirds is a socially and environmentally conscious business. Mexbird’s work has led Tamaulipas´s state government to launch El Cielo Emblematic Park project in 2007
What types of partnerships or professional development would be most beneficial in spreading your innovation?
Conservation organizations that can help fund the different stages of our project (diagnosis, local bird guide training, basic infrastructure, promotion) would help.
We would benefit from legal advice to formalize “Mexbirds” as a company and not just a person promoting El Cielo.
In order to expand our project and replicate our success, we would like to link up with other Natural Protected areas in Mexico that have been carrying out work with bird education and local communities, so we can promote birding in their territory.
Funding to start operating CIE (Interpretative Ecological Center) being build in Gomez Farias is needed.
Impact
In one sentence describe what kind of impact, change, or reform your approach is intended to achieve.
Switch from massive to nature watching tourism that fosters conservation of natural resources and generates more income for locals, thus achieving sustainable development.
Describe the degree of success of your approach to date. Clearly define how you measure quantitative and qualitative impact in terms of how your approach contributes to the sustainability or enhancement of local culture, environment, heritage, or aesthetics? How does your approach minimize negative impacts? 200 words or less
Local women target the souvenirs they make to birders. The store sells $250 dollars per day with the visit of 30 birders, it sells only $150 dollars with the visit of hundreds of Mexican campers/hikers. Local women have learned about bird species in the process.
Local men make $15 dollars a day collecting “palmilla” and $60 dollars a day working as bird guides. Guiding also contributes to their self-esteem and fosters nature appreciation.
Bird guides and local hotels increased their birding-related business from 20% in the 2006-2007 season to 40% of their business in 2007-2008. Birders mean better income.
Birder visitation has increased form 172 in 2005, to 218 in 2006, to 314 in 2007. It’s expected to be approximately 570 in 2008.
Local birding guides participate in Christmas bird counts since 2006.
More trained eyes in the area have yielded discoveries of rare species such as Stygian Owl, Solitary Eagle and Godman´s Metalmark, a butterfly that was photographed live for the first time by a local El Cielo guide.
Local authorities of Gomez Farias and inhabitants have increased their interest in birds and birders. They now decorate their town and their businesses with paintings of birds and butterflies.
How does your program promote traveler enthusiasm, satisfaction, and engagement with the locale?
Participants of Mexbirds’s trips are shown a video of the area and the work being done. Surveys visitors fill have been instrumental in improving the service Mexbirds provides to participants. Improvements include editing a video and map, redesigned schedules and menus and distributing refillable water bottles to decrease the amount of plastic bottle trash produced by participants.
Local guides give a lecture on “Songs and Calls of the Birds of El Cielo”, they imitate birds and participants guess the species.
Visitors are encouraged to tip locals if they like their service. In-kind and cash donations have been obtained form visitors.
Describe how your innovation helps travelers and local residents better understand the value of the area’s cultural and natural heritage, and educates them on local environmental issues. How do you motivate them to act responsibly in their future travel decisions?
Bird watching generates a wealth of knowledge about nature and promotes the desire to conserve the environment, since nature signifies economic wellbeing for locals.
Visitors learn about the cultural heritage thorough talks and they get a taste of the local food like “nopales” that are prepared by local businesses.
Visitors are encouraged to use refillable water bottles to minimize trash. Local guide carry plastic bags to pick up any trash they find.
Mexbirds’s institutional video informs visitors of the work that is being carried out with the communities and El Cielo Emblematic Park Project ECEPP.
In what ways are local residents actively involved in your innovation, including participation and community input? How has the community responded to or benefited from your approach?
Communities have been an integral part of the project since the beginning. A business plan for bird watching tourism was made in conjunction with Alta Cima in 2003. Training workshops for local men and women have helped them develop skills in the topics they have requested. Local women chose embroidery of birds and butterflies and cooking. Local men chose first aid and birding/butterfly guide.
Help for acquiring no interest loans has been provided to local groups of men and women. Improvement in lodging and restaurant infrastructure and acquisition of motors for their boats are some examples.
This Entry is about (Issues)
Sustainability
Is your initiative financially and organizationally sustainable? If not, what is required to make it so? What is the potential demand for your innovation?
Because Mexbirds was conceived as an environmentally conscious tour operating business, financial sustainability has been a key factor from the start. Tour prices allow us to pay all local businesses and generate 20% profit for Mexbirds.
Because Mexico neighbors the United States, our products target US birdwatchers. According to NSRE (National Survey on Recreation and the Environment), the size of the birdwatching market went from 69.7 million birdwatchers in 2001-2003 to 81.5 million in 2004-2006. Though the survey includes casual birders that might not be willing to travel, we only a small fraction of this market.
How is your initiative currently financed? If available, provide information on your finances and organization that could help others. Please list: Annual budget, annual revenue generated, size of part-time, full-time and volunteer staff.
Mexbird’s project started in 2003; we’ve secured funds from local, state and federal Mexican government agencies, conducted diagnosis, training, basic infrastructure improvements and promotion.
Tamaulipas’s State government launched “El Cielo Emblematic Park Project” ECEPP in 2007, strengthening Mexbirds’s work. Their objective is to transform El Cielo Biosphere Reserve into an emblematic regional park, taking into account ecological, economic and cultural aspects that allow for sustainable development of the natural protected area. Mexbird’s is a consultant to ECEPP, which includes regulations, development of local economy and an Ecological Interpretative Center (CIE) that will also serve as community center. ECEPP’s budget:
2007: $27`317,000 pesos ($2`601,619 dollars)
2008: $75,200,000 pesos ($7`161,905 dollars)
2009: $9,500,000 pesos ($904,762 dollars)
Mexbirds has one full-time, one part-time staff and a group of six volunteers. Our annual sales in 2007 were $56,000 dollars with 20% profit. We expect 2008 sales to be $100,000 with the same profit margin.
What is your plan to expand your approach? Please indicate where/how you would like to grow or enhance your innovation, or have others do so.
El Cielo Biosphere Reserve has been a pilot project for Mexbirds all along. Our plans are to consolidate our work and replicate the model in other natural protected areas of Mexico, taking advantage of our travel client base. Before we promote trips to other areas, we want to have local birding guides in them that would benefit from our promotion. For that reason, we would like to team up with other natural protected areas in Mexico that have trained local guides and start promoting trips in those areas. We have worked in Durango’s Sierra Madre doing bird potential diagnosis and started guide training and we are open to linking with other areas as well. There is a big opportunity to bring birdwatchers into Mexico, offering ALL INCLUSIVE package tours departing from the United States, as Mexbirds has been doing, works out because it makes it easy for travelers that don’t speak Spanish and are afraid to travel to Mexico on their own.
What are the main barriers you encounter in managing, implementing, or replicating your innovation? What barriers keep your program from having greater impact?
For-profit businesses are often seen as only looking to make money. Socially responsible For-profit organizations like Mexbirds can be a great ally to Non-profit organizations looking to achieve sustainable development in natural protected areas.
Mexico’s public economic policy for rural areas is development of agriculture and farming. In terms of tourism policy, it’s promoting huge tourist developments on beaches. Mexican government officials do not realize that by developing tourism in rural areas the jobs and the money go directly where they are needed, preventing people to migrate to large cities in Mexico or to the United States. Authorities measure the success of a tourist destination in terms of number of tourists, instead of measuring revenue generated per traveler and taking into account other factors like prevention of migration and reduced impact on the environment.
We do not have a birding or nature watching culture in Mexico, for this reason it is hard to get local inhabitants and authorities interested in developing something they don’t understand. Our advertising and promotion budget has been scarce and we usually do things in-house to keep costs down, including brochures and website. This has prevented us from having a professional look.
Political will is hard to achieve.
The Story
Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers' marketing material.
Sonia Ortiz was born and raised in Monterrey Mexico; got a Chemistry degree from University of Colorado; started her professional life as a teacher, then went on to work in marketing and sales and then business consulting. Since 1987, she decided to dedicate her life to helping rural communities develop a sustainable way of living through nature tourism.
Sonia and Patricia Luevano started a pilot project in 2003 for “sustainable development through birding” in El Cielo Biosphere Reserve in Tamaulipas; their effort that has promoted synergies between numerous individuals and organizations increasing the quality of life of local inhabitants and fostering conservation.
What is the origin of your innovation? Tell your story.
Until 1997, I worked as a business consultant for a firm in Monterrey Mexico. I quit in December and started looking for a job that would keep me close to home and my family. I worried I didn’t find a job right away; but knew once I had one I wouldn’t be able to take a vacation for a long time.
In February 1998 I took a 10-day tour in the Usumacinta River accompanied by my oldest son, we really enjoyed the well-preserved nature. Camping by the river, we sometimes encountered very poor families. Famished children reminded me of the ones I had seen on National Geographic’s magazine articles about Somalia, only this time they didn’t feel that far from my heart. I couldn’t believe such poverty existed in my own country!
Our guides set camp and served us dinner on tables dressed in tablecloths and candles. Deprived as we were of our usual comfort, I felt bad about us flashing our wealth in front of starved people.
Deep into the middle of nowhere, locals wearing bandanas on their faces robbed us at gunpoint. We gave them everything we had, including the shoes we were wearing. They let us leave unharmed.
Walking into Palenque in my bear feet was a humbling experience. I don’t justify the robbery, but the experience got me thinking. “Here I am worried about who is going to give ME a job. I am fortunate to have a college degree and speak two languages, who is going to give THEM a job?” From that day on, I decided to dedicate my life to creating jobs in rural areas.
I started close to home in northeast Mexico, promoting tours to Potrero Redondo in my home state. I soon realized that to help locals, I first had to help them develop goods and services they could offer tourists. Laws to prevent the area from overdeveloping were essential. My greatest lesson was I needed to team up with other people and institutions if I was to do anything significant.
I met Patricia Luevano when she was coordinating the sea turtle recovery program in Tamaulipas and realized we shared the same ideals to help people and the environment. I started bringing school groups to the educational sea turtle camp to boost local economy and then we realized that sea turtles were only on the coast, but birds were all over. So Patricia and I decided to develop a conceptual project for “sustainable development of rural areas through birding” I contacted my friend Liliana Melo de Sada in Monterrey. She offered to get me an audience with the governor of Tamaulipas. We chose El Cielo Biosphere Reserve as our pilot project and started working in 2003. Sergio Medellin’s previous work with local communities helped us get started.
Governor Eugenio Hernandez Flores and Tourism Secretary Javier Villarreal Teran, support the use of natural resources and preservation of the environment with a great impulse to sustainable tourism through “El Cielo Emblematic Park Project”.
Please write an overview of your project. This text will appear when people scroll over the icon for your entry on the Google map located on the competition homepage.
El Cielo Biosphere Reserve is located in Northeast Mexico; it consists of four ecosystems and contains the northernmost cloud forest in the American continent. El Cielo has close to 400 species of birds, 150 of which find their northernmost range in this area.
Mexbirds started a project to promote sustainable development though birding in 2003. Financially supported by Tamaulipas State government and other funds from federal government and NGOs, we have carried out diagnosis, training of locals as bird and butterfly watching guides and organized ALL INCLUSIVE package tours departing from the Texas Valley since 2005.
We invite you to participate in one of our events and contribute to sustainable development of the area.
Mexbirds’s work has been consolidated through “El Cielo Emblematic Park Project” ECEPP launched by Tamaulipas’s State Government in 2007. This political will has enabled the synergy of efforts for sustainable development of the area through the participation of different government agencies at the local, state and federal government level; Educational institutions, NGO´s, private initiative and local campesino groups. Birding and butterfly watching has increased the income received by locals and improved their quality of life as well as promoted conservation.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Alta Cima 2 (AH).jpg | 97.94 KB |
| Alta Cima (AH).jpg | 65.51 KB |
| annas88 (B. Spencer).jpg | 201.06 KB |
| Azure-crowned Hummingbird 2.jpg | 38.25 KB |
| BarredAntshrike2.jpg | 47.67 KB |
| P7060539.JPG | 1.5 MB |
| P7050478.JPG | 1.52 MB |
| PB030386.JPG | 1.55 MB |
| Pygmy-Owl Tamaulipas 2.JPG | 775.28 KB |
| Imagen 414.jpg | 141.03 KB |
| altamira yellowthroat (RJ).jpg | 39.47 KB |
| White-crowned parrots (RJ).jpg | 130.49 KB |
| Trogon (RJ).jpg | 104.43 KB |
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}