Deep in a forest in the Andes, high atop a tall tree, there’s a quick, colorful flash of plumage in vivid shades of yellow, green, and blue. A high-pitched musical chirp rings out. Through a carefully trained pair of binoculars, a beautiful little bird comes into view. It’s a multicolored tanager, a species that lives only in the mountains of Colombia. Seeing it in person for the first time feels like the thrill of discovery. Watching it search for fruit across the treetops brings a sense of peace and connection to nature.
Experiences like these are what motivate birdwatchers to travel the globe, in hopes of seeing as many different types of birds as possible in one lifetime. Along the way, they visit many beautiful places, meet new friends, make memories, and develop a deeper appreciation for the incredible biological diversity of our planet. Increasingly, they also play a role in protecting that biodiversity.
The popularity of birdwatching has exploded in the past decade, so much so that the hobby is helping to drive global ecotourism. Birdwatching tourism is a form of sustainable development that incentivizes the preservation of habitats and can be especially beneficial for countries in the tropics, which have high bird biodiversity, large numbers of unique species, and generally lower levels of economic development, meaning that an inflow of tourist dollars can have an outsized impact, especially in rural communities.
However, new research from the University of California, Santa Cruz shows that, so far, not all countries have benefited equally from the growth of birdwatching tourism. Scientists wanted to understand what might be affecting tourists’ choice of destinations, so they used data from eBird, a popular birding app, to model how birding tourism growth was affected by a range of ecological and socioeconomic factors across 155 countries. The results identify clear challenges and prominent success stories, which may offer lessons for countries looking to promote birdwatching.
Harnessing birdwatching data
UC Santa Cruz conservation ecologist Natalia Ocampo-Peñuela, lead author of the new study, is from Colombia, a country that has had notable success in developing birdwatching tourism. She and fellow UC Santa Cruz ecologist and study coauthor Scott Winton have done many birdwatching trips in Colombia and elsewhere and became curious about how the industry was developing globally.
“We had long wondered about birdwatching as a way to achieve both conservation and economic development,” Ocampo-Peñuela recalls. “It’s something we’ve often discussed with other birdwatchers on trips, so these research questions were really born from some of those conversations in the field.”
“Over the years, we’ve seen Colombia really explode as a birdwatching destination, and we often asked ourselves why more countries aren’t similarly recognized as great places for birdwatching,” Winton added. “So we wanted to systematically look at some easily measurable factors that could be influencing trends in visitation.”
Researchers suspected there were certain conditions that positioned a country to take full advantage of birdwatching tourism. One seemingly obvious prerequisite: interesting birds. The team believed birders were being drawn to places with high “bird capital,” where they could see many different types of birds in one trip, including many species found only in a very specific area. But birders likely also needed some level of basic infrastructure and safety measures in place to support tourism.
To determine how these factors might be affecting global industry development trends, Ocampo-Peñuela and Winton enlisted the help of computer scientists and a quantitative ecologist to unlock the secrets of a massive treasure trove of community science data from eBird, an app that bird watching hobbyists use to track their observations. More than 100 million bird sightings are contributed by eBird users around the world each year.
UC Santa Cruz Computer Science and Engineering Professor Luca de Alfaro led students Katarina Bjegovic and Sam de Alfaro in wrangling user-submitted eBird data from 2010 through 2022. This was then used by Environmental Studies Postdoctoral Scholar Monte Neate-Clegg to run statistical models analyzing the growth of birding over time on a country-by-country basis.
“What we computer scientists injected into this research was an ability to analyze a huge amount of data in a very efficient way, which enables us to look at these statistics at this scale for the first time,” Alfaro explained.
To estimate how much of the global growth in birding came from tourism, the team first determined the most likely country of residence for each individual user—based on where they submitted the most bird checklists—then categorized the user’s activity in other countries as tourism. They then compared trends over time in each country’s relative share of birdwatching tourism. And across 155 countries, researchers modeled the influence on birdwatching tourism trends from four major variables: total bird biodiversity, the number of small-range bird species, the Human Development Index, and the Global Peace Index.
Disparities in tourism trends
Results from the team’s data analysis showed lots of potential for the development of birdwatching tourism across the tropics, but a complicated picture of which countries were best equipped to capitalize.
Since 2010, overall global birdwatching activity on eBird has increased dramatically, particularly in countries with the highest numbers of small-range birds. Colombia had the most explosive growth, with 40 times more birding days reported in 2022 than 2010. When looking at tourist activity specifically, Colombia still took the top spot, while South Africa showed the second highest growth rate overall.
However, other countries across the tropics, like the Democratic Republic of Congo and Venezuela, experienced essentially no growth in tourist activity over the 12-year period. And while the overall number of birdwatching tourists grew in most other tropical countries, the proportion of global birding tourism they captured was either flat or declining. Colombia was the one exception, achieving a doubling in market share prior to the pandemic and a steady post-pandemic rebound.
Some countries, like Canada and Western European countries, had disproportionately high levels of visitation compared to their bird capital, while countries like Venezuela, Bolivia, Madagascar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Papua New Guinea had disproportionately low levels of birding tourism. Countries that had both high visitation and high levels of bird capital included Costa Rica, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, and Australia.
A possible explanation for some of these trends is that researchers discovered birds were not the most important factor driving birdwatching tourism decisions. A country’s Human Development Index actually explained 41.4% of the variation in visitation, followed by total species richness at 22.4%, relative small-range richness at 15.3%, and relative Global Peace Index at 1.4%.
Still, some countries with relatively similar ecological and socioeconomic profiles, like Colombia and Venezuela, had vastly differing outcomes. Mexico was also a notable overachiever relative to its bird resources, indicating that there may be additional factors driving tourism decisions, like public perception, visa requirements, political affinities, and ease and affordability of travel from major tourist source countries like the United States, where the researchers found most birding tourists come from.
Creating birding destinations
Based on the team’s findings, the research paper proposes a few strategies that might help countries increase their appeal as birdwatching destinations.
For developing countries that struggle with conflict or crime, it may be encouraging that the Global Peace Index on its own was not a major factor in tourists’ choice of destinations. This may be because what matters most to ecotourists is not necessarily the overall safety and development of a country, but that of the specific tourist locales. This means ecotourism can be a great initial type of tourism to start building out in developing countries.
In Colombia’s case, the country’s meteoric and relatively recent rise in birdwatching tourism seems to be linked to the success of a major marketing campaign by the country’s tourism development agency. Meanwhile, Costa Rica, which was an overachiever in bird watching tourism relative to its bird resources, is a well-established ecotourism destination that offers a model for how to prioritize building a green economy over extractive industry by investing in specialized tourism infrastructure, guides, and safety.
Countries wanting to develop birding tourism can offer tax abatements, subsidies, or loans to build birding infrastructure like canopy towers, trails, and hides. They can also support the training of local guides and conservation of bird habitats and offer certification programs and tax benefits for sustainable, community-led tourism businesses.
But the study’s authors acknowledge that the natural habitats bird watching tourism relies upon face competing land uses like logging, agriculture, or mining. These extractive uses can produce substantial short-term profits, while the benefits of ecotourism are more of a long game. So promoting that long-term vision may require support from strong land-use policies and community co-management of resources.
Ultimately, the decision of whether and how to engage in any form of tourism, including birdwatching, should always reside with local and Indigenous communities. When done well, Ocampo-Peñuela believes the results can be transformative.
“Just as I’ve seen birding tourism change people’s lives in my native Colombia, I hope other tropical countries can come together to conserve and showcase their amazing bird capital,” she said.
