BirdLife International

  • BirdLife International (formerly the International Council for Bird Preservation) is a global partnership of conservationorganisations 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.
  • BirdLife International’s priorities include preventing extinction of bird species, identifying and safeguarding important sites for birds, maintaining and restoring key bird habitats, and empowering conservationists worldwide.
  • BirdLife International is the official Red List authority for birds, for the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

What are Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs)?

Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) are sites contributing significantly to the global persistence of biodiversity. They are identified using a standard set of criteria applicable to plants, animals and ecosystems.

What are Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBAs) and what is their relationship with KBAs?

Since the late 1970s, the BirdLife Partnership has been working collectively to identify, document and protect all places on earth of greatest significance for the conservation of the world’s birds.  As a result, over 12,000 Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBAs) have been identified. All of these sites are also KBAs for birds at the global or regional level.

Since birds have been shown to be effective indicators of wider biodiversity, many IBAs are likely to be also KBAs for other animal and plant species.

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