Is birding tourist in Colombia all set to fly?

In March of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic caught us at home, my sweetheart and I purchased a birdfeeder. A month later on, we were choosing runs around our Oakland community, bring a set of field glasses and a paperback guidebook to the birds of California while taping the outcomes for posterity on our phones.

“We stopped our run, because we’re in a very bird-rich area,” I said in one recording. “Yeah, we got two sparrows and two pigeons here,” my sweetheart reacted.

Thus started our little part in the worldwide pandemic birding bump.

Birdwatching was a multibillion-dollar market in the United States prior to the pandemic. Today, there are 60% more individuals logging their lists on the bird identification app eBird. The variety of individuals in the Great Backyard Bird Count has more than doubled.

This amounts to more individuals purchasing bird feeders, field glasses and electronic cameras. Now that worldwide travel is recuperating, it likewise implies brand-new opportunities for worldwide birding tourist — particularly in Colombia.

In one community stroll in the city of Cali, Colombia, with regional guide Andres Lozano, I saw Colombian chachalacas, black-throated mangos, jet antbirds, 4 sort of tanager, yellow-bellied seedeaters, chestnut-fronted macaws — 35 types in less than half a mile.

It was a striking contrast to the sparrows, pigeons and crows of our community in California. But in Colombia, it’s typical. Colombia has more types of birds than any other nation worldwide, with almost one-fifth of Earth’s bird types.

Colombia does not, nevertheless, lead the world in the variety of birdwatchers.

“The country with most species of birds in the world still has very few birdwatchers,” said Carlos Mario Wagner, Colombian birding leader and director of the Colombia Bird Fair.

Wagner said that when he was maturing, running around in the woods with field glasses in Colombia was downright hazardous.

“It’s very associated with armed groups,” he said. It was an activity for soldiers in the Colombian army, conservative paramilitary groups and left-wing rebel groups that had actually been defending years.

An early-morning birding exploration in a residential area of Cali, Colombia, arranged by the Colombia Bird Fair. (Stan Alcorn)

Jorge Maldonado, a teacher of economics at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, set out to determine the untapped financial capacity of bird tourist in 2015. At that time, the Colombian federal government was lastly working out a peace handle the biggest staying rebel group: the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, much better referred to as the FARC. It appeared like it was lastly going to be safe to go to a number of the wild locations that might be birding locations.

“Now, we have the possibilities of access to places that before it was impossible to go,” Maldonado said.

His study estimated that a theoretical 10-day trip of post-conflict Colombia might draw in a minimum of 280,000 birders from the United States and Canada.

“If this is going to happen, we are getting $46 million per year,” Maldonado said.

It’s tough to assess this price quote, as trusted figures on the variety of birding travelers in Colombia are tough to come by, however worldwide visitors to Colombia did increase substantially after the peace deal. One million more worldwide visitors were getting here each year, according to the Colombian federal government’s figures.

Then came the pandemic. “It was devastating,” Maldonado said. “Now, we are recovering again.”

One indication of the healing was the ninth annual Colombia Bird Fair, back face to face this year for the very first time considering that COVID-19 struck. I was one amongst numerous worldwide bird geeks. There were workshops, lectures — even a competitors to mimic the call of a chestnut-breasted wren.

Mollee Brown, owner of the birding-focused marketing business the Nighthawk Agency, existed. She was running a workshop to help Colombians much better promote their birding businesses to a market modified by the pandemic.

“There has definitely been a big increase in people who are interested in birds and birdwatching,” she said. That might suggest a huge boost in birders concerning Colombia, as long as the facilities can maintain.

“Building up local guides, local conservation initiatives, local protected land, the feelings of security and confidence to travel in Colombia — I think all of those things need to click,” Brown said.