Mexico

A Central Spot for Bird Conservation

Because of its geographic location and the diversity of its landscapes, Mexico occupies a central place in bird conservation across the Americas. With more than 1,100 recorded species, the country is home to nearly 10% of the world’s bird diversity, including dozens of endemic species and a wide variety of migratory birds that depend on its ecosystems throughout the year.

Each season, Mexico becomes a meeting point for migratory birds arriving with very different travel stories. Some settle as winter residents: they breed in the northern part of the continent—from Alaska and Canada to northern Mexico—and spend the colder months in Mexican forests, tropical ecosystems, and wetlands, and even farther south in Central America. Others are summer residents, species that breed in Mexico and move seasonally to warmer regions within the country or farther south during winter.

In addition, many birds use Mexico as a stopover territory, crossing it during migrations between North America and Central or South America. This group includes species with both migratory populations—estimated at around 250 species—and resident populations. While northern populations move seasonally, others remain year-round in different regions of the country. Together, these movements involve hundreds of species and underscore Mexico’s role as an essential territory for completing the life cycles of migratory birds across the hemisphere.

Coastal wetlands, mangroves, deserts, tropical forests, and temperate woodlands serve as critical sites for rest, feeding, and reproduction, connecting Mexico to migratory routes that span the Western Hemisphere.

Yet these landscapes face growing pressures. Urban and agricultural expansion, water overexploitation, watershed degradation, wetland loss, and the impacts of climate change threaten essential habitats for both birds and the communities that depend on them. In this context, bird conservation in Mexico is deeply linked to land, water, and working-landscape management.

Audubon has worked in Mexico for years in partnership with local organizations, communities, and public-sector actors to advance conservation solutions grounded in science, collaboration, and a landscape-based approach. One emblematic example is the collaborative work in the Colorado River Basin, where Audubon has contributed to binational, multisector efforts to restore wetlands, recover environmental flows, and protect critical migratory bird habitat—demonstrating that cross-border cooperation is essential for effective conservation.

More recently, Audubon has strengthened partnerships with Mexican organizations to promote bird-friendly agriculture, bird tourism, participatory monitoring, and environmental education, integrating biodiversity conservation with the well-being of rural communities. These collaborations aim to conserve and restore functional landscapes where birds and people can thrive together, now and in the future.
 

Where we work in Mexico 

Protected Areas

Protected areas are one of the most effective tools for conserving biodiversity, maintaining essential ecosystem services, and strengthening climate resilience. However, in Latin America and the Caribbean, only about 40% of Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBAs) have some form of protection, and protected areas cover just 9% of migratory bird distributions. This protection gap underscores the urgency of strengthening and expanding conservation frameworks in key sites.

In this context, Conserva Aves emerged as a hemispheric initiative led by five organizations: American Bird Conservancy, National Audubon Society, BirdLife International, Birds Canada, and RedLAC. Its initial goal was to create, consolidate, and strengthen more than 100 protected areas across nine countries in Latin America and the Caribbean focused on threatened, endemic, and migratory birds—a goal the initiative has already surpassed, expanding its territorial and conservation impact across the region.

Conserva Aves is currently implemented in Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Peru, and, through recent expansion, Chile. In Mexico, Conserva Aves México supports 12 projects in priority areas aimed at creating new Voluntarily Designated Conservation Areas (ADVCs) or expanding existing ones. These areas arise through the initiative of Indigenous peoples, local communities, civil society organizations, and private landowners who choose to dedicate their territories to conservation while maintaining direct management of their lands.

In Mexico, Conserva Aves promotes an integrated approach combining conservation, community strengthening, and long-term sustainability. Each project is developed through participatory processes and includes a management strategy and financial sustainability plan, with a gender and social inclusion perspective.

National implementation takes place in close collaboration with key partners, including the Mexican Fund for the Conservation of Nature (FMCN), responsible for project operation, oversight, and accompaniment, and Pronatura Sur, which leads technical assessments and capacity-building for local organizations. This support combines virtual and in-person components and includes biological monitoring, certification processes, institutional strengthening, and the application of environmental and social safeguards.

Through these partnerships, Audubon contributes to consolidating a network of natural areas that protect critical bird habitat while strengthening the communities and organizations that steward them—connecting local conservation with a hemispheric vision.

National Strategy for Bird Conservation in Mexico (ENCA) 2025–2035

Bird conservation in Mexico is deeply connected to the migratory processes linking North America with Central and South America. Millions of birds that breed in the United States and Canada depend on Mexican ecosystems for wintering, resting, and feeding during much of their life cycle. This interdependence has given rise to long-standing regional initiatives such as Partners in Flight (PIF) and the North American Bird Conservation Initiative (NABCI), which have promoted coordinated conservation action among countries.

While the United States and Canada have developed and implemented comprehensive plans for migratory landbird conservation over the past several decades, efforts in Mexico have historically focused on waterbirds and shorebirds. As a result, many landbirds — both resident and migratory — have received limited attention despite clear evidence of population decline. Between 1970 and 2017, landbirds experienced the greatest net loss in abundance in North America, with particularly sharp declines in nonbreeding regions that include parts of Mexico.

In response, the National Strategy for Bird Conservation in Mexico (ENCA) 2026–2036 has emerged as a collective effort to define a recovery pathway for species of greatest concern. ENCA seeks to integrate scientific, traditional, and local knowledge, available data, and the experience of specialists, civil society organizations, and decision-makers to establish a national strategic framework with a regional perspective.

The development of ENCA is grounded in participatory methodologies aligned with the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation, including regional and national workshops, identification of threats and conservation objectives, and strengthened coordination among key stakeholders. The strategy is being developed in collaboration with the National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO), the Pronatura network across Mexico (with presence in the Central, Northeast, Northwest, and Southern regions of the country, Veracruz, and the Yucatán Peninsula), and a broad network of national and international institutions, including Mexican federal agencies, academic organizations, and hemispheric partners. Within this framework, the National Audubon Society contributes technical expertise and a hemispheric perspective, helping connect Mexico’s efforts with trinational and regional migratory bird conservation initiatives.

Beyond guiding conservation action over the next decade, ENCA is designed as a living instrument, capable of periodic updates that will help focus funding more effectively and align efforts across sectors. In this context, Audubon supports linking ENCA with similar strategies being advanced across the Americas, strengthening a shared hemispheric vision for bird conservation and recognizing the ecological interdependence among countries across the continent.

Volcanoes and conservation: bird tourism in the Izta-Popo landscape

The high-mountain region surrounding Iztaccíhuatl–Popocatépetl National Park contains some of the most emblematic ecosystems in central Mexico. Pine, fir, and oak forests, along with high-elevation grasslands, provide essential habitat for resident and migratory birds, many of them associated with temperate mountain ecosystems that are highly sensitive to climate change.

In this landscape, Audubon, together with Reforestamos México, is advancing an initiative that links bird conservation with community-based bird tourism as a tool for sustainable landscape management. The project aims to strengthen local capacity to develop birdwatching experiences that highlight the value of the region’s biodiversity while generating economic alternatives compatible with forest conservation.

In the Izta-Popo region, bird tourism is conceived as a form of active conservation. By recognizing birds and their habitats as natural assets, the initiative encourages responsible land stewardship, forest restoration, and community participation in ecosystem protection. This approach connects bird conservation with broader processes of forest governance, climate-change adaptation, and sustainable rural development.

Through this partnership, the volcanoes represent not only an iconic landscape, but also a living territory shaped by the communities who inhabit it — communities that find in nature an opportunity to conserve, learn, and build well-being, ensuring that high-mountain birds and forests continue to fulfill their ecological role for generations to come.