Birds and oil palm: cultivating sustainable landscapes

As the world's most bird-diverse country, Colombia is home to 1,969 recorded bird species. Many of these birds inhabit landscapes that overlap with nearly 1.5 million acres of oil palm plantations, making the sector a key opportunity to advance biodiversity-friendly production across four major regions.

National Audubon Society and Fedepalma - Colombia's National Federation of Oil Palm Growers- present Birds and Oil Palm: Cultivating Sustainable Landscapes, a manual built on a simple but powerful premise: palm production and bird conservation are not opposing goals. They can,  and should, go hand in hand.

Birds as allies, not occasional visitors

The manual documents 745 bird species reported across the country's four palm-growing zones (Northern, Central, Eastern, and Southwestern), of which 88% are resident species, and 12% are migratory. Among them are endemic and threatened species, as well as others that perform essential ecological functions: insect control, seed dispersal, pollination, and even landscape sanitation carried out by scavenging birds.

Each of these functions directly supports the productivity and resilience of the crop. Insectivorous birds can contribute to the natural control of insects potentially harmful to the plantation, while frugivorous species help disperse seeds and support the regeneration of natural vegetation.

From theory to practice

The technical core of the manual comprises seven tools that any palm farm can implement, adapted to its own context: protection and enrichment of forest fragments, restoration of riparian buffer zones, biological corridors, living fences, scattered trees, nectar-producing plants, and bird gardens. Each tool includes concrete benefits for the farm, benefits for birds, and practical implementation recommendations.

These tools are based on the lessons learned from the Biodiversity Palm Landscape Project, implemented by Fedepalma between 2012 and 2018, and complemented by the High Conservation Value (HCV) framework. While the High Conservation Value (HCV) framework helps identify the landscape elements that should be conserved for their ecological, social, or cultural importance, Habitat Management Practices (HMPs) provide practical guidance for managing, restoring, and connecting those elements within oil palm landscapes.

This manual arrives at a pivotal moment for Colombia's palm oil sector, which has been strengthening a sustainability vision aligned with international standards such as the Roundtable on Sustainable Oil Palm, the Decalogue of Principles for Sustainable Oil Palm in Colombia, and the sector's prior advances in biodiversity. Within this framework, birds are not an obstacle to production, they are allies and indicators of the health of the landscape.

Download the playbook here