BirdLife International


BirdLife International is a global partnership of non-governmental organizations that strives to conserve birds and their habitats. 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.
It has a membership of more than 2.5 million people across 116 country partner organizations, including the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the Wild Bird Society of Japan, the National Audubon Society and American Bird Conservancy.
BirdLife International has identified 13,000 Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas and is the official International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List authority for birds. As of 2015, BirdLife International has established that 1,375 bird species are threatened with extinction.
BirdLife International publishes a quarterly magazine, , which contains recent news and authoritative articles about birds and their conservation.

History

BirdLife International was founded in 1922 as the International Council for Bird Preservation by American ornithologists T. Gilbert Pearson and Jean Theodore Delacour under the name International Committee for Bird Protection. The group was renamed International Committee for Bird Preservation in 1928, International Council for Bird Preservation in 1960, and "BirdLife International" in 1993.

Global programmes

BirdLife International has nine conservation programmes implemented across Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Central Asia, the Middle East and the Pacific. The programmes provide the framework for planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating conservation work and include the Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas Programme, Marine Programme, Preventing Extinctions Programme, and Flyways Programme.