From the Mountains to the Coast: Communities Exchange Birdwatching Tourism Experiences in Oaxaca, Mexico

Birds connect territories. They can also connect the people who live in them, their knowledge, and the different ways of building opportunities through conservation.

With that idea in mind, members of communities from the Iztaccíhuatl-Popocatépetl corridor, in central Mexico, traveled to the coast of Oaxaca to take part in an exchange with people who have spent years developing birdwatching tourism in the region.

Representatives from agrarian communities such as Amecameca, San Pedro Ecatzingo, Santiago Cuautenco, and San Miguel Atlautla took part, spending time with guides and local stakeholders from the Oaxacan coast.

The gathering is part of a process that Audubon is carrying out together with Reforestamos México and the National Union of Community Forestry Organizations  (UNOFOC) to strengthen skills related to bird knowledge, guiding, and the provision of birdwatching services in the Iztaccíhuatl-Popocatépetl corridor.

“The goal is for people to put into practice what they have learned over the course of this year, and to be able to learn about other experiences to broaden their perspective. Seeing that birdwatching tourism works in other regions, and that it can also bear fruit in the Iztapopo area, allows them to imagine what they could achieve in their own communities,” explained Socorro Medina, from UNOFOC. 

And that was, above all, what happened during the visit: learning by doing. Over the course of several birdwatching outings, the group visited different sites along the Oaxaca coast and accompanied local guides to see firsthand aspects such as species identification, reading the landscape, leading groups, and the role of those who guide a birdwatching experience.

Birding together also made it possible to recognize the value of local knowledge. Knowing birds is not just about identifying species: it means understanding the territory, its cycles, its habitats, and the relationships communities have built with them. That knowledge is a fundamental foundation for developing birdwatching tourism experiences rooted in the local context.

At Playa Bacocho, in Puerto Escondido, the group also took part in a bird banding demonstration, a tool used for studying and monitoring birds. The activity offered a closer look at another dimension of bird knowledge and sparked conversation about the relationship between observation, research, and conservation.

The program also included a roundtable with birdwatching guides from the coast, where challenges and lessons learned were shared about the preparation needed to welcome visitors and develop this activity in different contexts. The conversations also addressed the effects of climate change on birds and the challenges of building tourism initiatives that are sustainable and generate benefits for communities.

As part of the gathering, Catalina Casas, Field Conservation Manager for Audubon Latin America and Caribbean, presented the results of a diagnostic assessment stemming from a workshop on livelihoods and community well-being. This exercise identified challenges and opportunities for developing birdwatching tourism in the Iztaccíhuatl-Popocatépetl corridor and outlined the next steps in the process.

For Laura Ortega Martínez, a participant from Amecameca, the trip also meant discovering an entirely new territory. It was her first time visiting Oaxaca and the first time she had ever seen the ocean. But among the landscapes and the birds, what caught her attention most was the way people on the coast care for and share their territory.

“I would really like for this knowledge and these experiences to be brought back to where I live, not just for my own sake, but for the whole community. Above all, I'm taking with me an awareness of caring for birds and their habitat,” she shared.

Rather than transplanting a model from one place to another, the exchange made it possible to learn what already works, ask questions, compare realities, and think about what could be adapted to each context. From the mountains of central Mexico to the coast of Oaxaca, birds became the meeting point for learning across territories and exploring new ways to link conservation and community well-being.

“Birdwatching tourism is an excuse, in the best sense of the word, for people to see that there is an economic activity that can generate income, but underlying it is the conservation of birds, the land, and all the natural capital that exists,” explained Irving Barrera, a consultant for Audubon who supports the training process with communities in the Iztaccíhuatl-Popocatépetl corridor.

Between mountains and coast, the exchange showed that birds not only connect territories, they also connect knowledge, experiences, and communities that find, in conservation, new ways to care for and strengthen the places they inhabit.