![\"\"](\"https:\/\/conserva-aves.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/DSC01198.JPG-scaled-1.webp\")
<\/p>\nConserva Aves 2023\u20132026 initiative has completed its implementation phase in Bolivia with more than 700,000 hectares declared as subnational protected areas, and with the prospect of approaching one million in the coming months. The result stems from work carried out together with key partners, municipal governments, and Indigenous and campesino communities across different territories of the country. The announcement was made during the closing event held on 21 August in the Aurum Hall of the Stannum Boutique Hotel in La Paz.<\/p>\n
“Until a few days ago it was 450-some thousand hectares. But now we have the good news that this figure has risen. The number changed very recently: one of the projects led by Faunagua in the It\u00e9nez has been completed and is legally established. With that, the total of declared hectares exceeds 700,000. And with the projects still to be closed in the months we have left, we will reach nearly one million hectares,” explained Rodrigo Soria, director of Asociaci\u00f3n Armon\u00eda, as he opened the closing ceremony.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The initiative, implemented in Bolivia by Asociaci\u00f3n Armon\u00eda and the Foundation for the Development of the National Protected Areas System (FUNDESNAP), was made possible thanks to the support of American Bird Conservancy, the National Audubon Society, BirdLife International, Birds Canada, and the Latin American and Caribbean Network of Environmental Funds (RedLAC).<\/p>\n
These organizations provided resources for the implementation of projects in territories of high priority for biodiversity, backed by 20 allied local governments, including municipalities and the Autonomous Indigenous Government of the Multiethnic Indigenous Territory (TIM).<\/p>\n
The closing ceremony of Conserva Aves, held under the theme “Territories that embrace life,” brought together Rodrigo Soria Auza, executive director of Armon\u00eda; Sergio Eguino, executive director of FUNDESNAP; Omar Rocha, executive director of BIOTA; Rodrigo Ayala, executive director of PROMETA; Catalina Rivadeneira, coordinator of the ORE Project; Severiano Matene, Indigenous leader of the TIM; and local authorities such as Denis Villarroel, president of the San Mat\u00edas Municipal Council, and F\u00e9lix Gonz\u00e1lez, mayor of Toro Toro. Also present were C\u00e9sar Altamirano, director of Planning at SERNAP; Cecilia Vides, regional coordinator of Conserva Aves for RedLAC; and Alfonso Hern\u00e1ndez, regional coordinator of the initiative for BirdLife International. The gathering offered a chance to share the progress achieved and to recognize the joint work carried out to strengthen the conservation of birds, biodiversity, and the territories that sustain them.<\/p>\n
Conserva Aves is a regional conservation initiative aimed at protecting birds, biodiversity, and ecosystem functions over the long term through the creation and consolidation of subnational protected areas. Its goal is to help protect at least two million hectares across nine Latin American countries, with an initial investment of USD 12 million from the Bezos Earth Fund for work in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. In Bolivia, Armon\u00eda and FUNDESNAP work alongside local organizations, municipal governments, and communities to advance protected areas in territories of high priority for threatened, endemic, and migratory birds.<\/p>\n
In the country, Conserva Aves carried out nine projects in Beni, Potos\u00ed, La Paz, Oruro, and Santa Cruz, selected through analysis of the distribution and habitat use of priority species. The projects seek to create or consolidate municipal, departmental, and Indigenous-territory protected areas, as well as ecological corridors and other conservation designations. The approach rests on the premise that protecting bird habitats makes it possible to conserve entire ecosystems. It is also especially relevant for the more than 80 migratory species that cross Bolivia each year, linking the country’s ecosystems to migration routes that extend across the continent.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/conserva-aves.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/DSC01227.JPG.webp\")
<\/p>\n
The legal creation of a protected area is only the first step toward securing its conservation. For this reason, Conserva Aves supported the projects in developing and securing approval for management plans and financial sustainability strategies \u2014 tools that make it possible to set concrete actions, define responsibilities, and guide the management of these territories over the long term. For Rodrigo Soria, this accompaniment is one of the initiative’s main points of difference compared with other conservation processes.<\/p>\n
“In many cases protected areas were declared and then left at that. Conserva Aves makes a difference in this respect, because each project was pushed not only to achieve the legal declaration of the protected areas \u2014 whether municipal, Indigenous, departmental, and so on \u2014 but also to develop and secure approval of their corresponding management plans and financial sustainability strategies, which are very important instruments for making the areas operational and which already set a course that each of the local partners will follow,” Soria explained.<\/p>\n
Soria also stressed that the close of this stage does not mean the end of the work. Armon\u00eda, FUNDESNAP, and their allies continue to explore mechanisms to give continuity to the processes that have begun. “Our efforts do not end here; we keep working,” he said.<\/p>\n
The results of Conserva Aves are also reflected in projects seeking to protect strategic sites for threatened and migratory species. One of them concerns Lakes Poop\u00f3 and Uru Uru, in Oruro, a complex of high-Andean wetlands that hosts significant concentrations of flamingos and other waterbirds. The project, led by the Center for Studies in Theoretical and Applied Biology (BIOTA), aims for this territory to be recognized as a national-level protected area covering approximately one million hectares, as anticipated by Omar Rocha, executive director of BIOTA.<\/p>\n
“These environments regularly host 50,000 flamingos of the three species. We have carried out monthly monitoring, and there is one extraordinary figure: in June 2005 we counted 250,000 individuals from Panza Island. That means this site, this wetland, is strategic for the conservation of waterbirds and, above all, for the three high-Andean flamingo species,” he explained.<\/p>\n
BIOTA’s second project is located in the Cu\u00f1urani subcentral, in the municipality of Torotoro, Potos\u00ed, where work is under way to create a municipal reserve of roughly 10,000 hectares. The area encompasses four communities and protects the Jala Jala canyon, identified as a key site for the Red-fronted Macaw, a species listed as Critically Endangered.<\/p>\n
“Through the monitoring we have carried out over an annual cycle, a breeding-season monitoring, it has been determined that this site, this protected area, holds 12% of the world population of the Red-fronted Macaw,” Rocha noted.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/conserva-aves.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-08-28-at-22.51.34.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
In the TIM, in the department of Beni, conservation is also tied to the protection of the territory and to the self-governance of the Indigenous peoples who live there. With nearly 600,000 hectares and more than 4,000 inhabitants, the TIM brings together five Indigenous peoples: Moje\u00f1o Ignaciano, Moje\u00f1o Trinitario, Yuracar\u00e9, Chim\u00e1n, and Movima. In this territory, the process driven by Conserva Aves was aligned with the communities’ own efforts to protect their forests, water sources, and biodiversity.<\/p>\n
“As a government we have seen the need to protect the headwaters of the rivers. Most of the Indigenous communities that make up the Multiethnic Indigenous Territory are located along the rivers. That is why we created the Loma Santa conservation area \u2014 because we see the importance of caring for the territory, our forests, all the biodiversity and, especially, the water, because that is the livelihood of Indigenous territories and of the communities that inhabit the TIM,” explained Severiano Matene, an Indigenous leader of the territory.<\/p>\n
For Matene, conservation is also a way of protecting the different cultures that coexist in the TIM. “With that we would also be protecting the way of life of the five Indigenous peoples,” he said.<\/p>\n
With the creation and consolidation of new protected areas, the challenge now is to strengthen their management and ensure their sustainability over time. In the view of Sergio Eguino, executive director of FUNDESNAP, the close of Conserva Aves does not represent the end of the road, but an opportunity to set new goals \u2014 such as expanding conservation efforts and improving management effectiveness in areas that already enjoy legitimacy in their territories.<\/p>\n
“Let’s make our dreams fly. Conserva Aves was a dream at first, three years ago, and we have achieved it. That has brought us to this moment, where we now have to dream beyond: about other areas and about improving management effectiveness, about how to make these areas sustainable. They already have legitimacy. So I think this is great progress,” Eguino said.<\/p>\n
Both Cecilia Vides, regional coordinator of the Conserva Aves initiative for RedLAC, and Alfonso Hern\u00e1ndez, regional coordinator of the initiative for BirdLife International, agreed that the progress achieved in Bolivia should open a new stage of work. Vides highlighted the commitment of the organizations and teams that accompanied the processes in the territories and called for continued strengthening of conservation, while Hern\u00e1ndez emphasized the role of the communities that protect these spaces and the joint work that made progress possible over these years. “Bolivia has much more to give, so we hope not to let go of this country, but to continue what we are doing,” Vides said. Hern\u00e1ndez, for his part, stressed that “Conserva Aves does not end here” and that the territories still need “much more support, continuity, management, and allies willing to keep walking together.”<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nine projects, six partners and joint work with municipal governments and communities drove the creation and consolidation of subnational protected areas in five of the country’s departments. The goal now is to approach one million hectares and strengthen the management of these territories.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":241647,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[176],"tags":[],"formats":[],"idioma":[258],"pais":[230],"class_list":["post-241677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-countries","pais-bolivia-en"],"acf":[],"dsm_author":{"name":"Samuel Alvarado","avatar_url":"https:\/\/conserva-aves.org\/wp-content\/litespeed\/avatar\/9c9a3dca9541edf54420cf6e10c03775.jpg?ver=1794262566","archive_link":"https:\/\/conserva-aves.org\/en\/author\/samuel-alvarado\/","biodata":""},"dsm_categories":[{"term_name":"Countries","term_id":176,"term_link":"https:\/\/conserva-aves.org\/en\/category\/countries\/"}],"dsm_attachment_categories":[],"dsm_featured_image":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/conserva-aves.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/IMG_0797-scaled-1-150x150.webp","medium":"https:\/\/conserva-aves.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/IMG_0797-scaled-1-300x225.webp","medium_large":"https:\/\/conserva-aves.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/IMG_0797-scaled-1-768x576.webp","large":"https:\/\/conserva-aves.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/IMG_0797-scaled-1-1024x768.webp","1536x1536":"https:\/\/conserva-aves.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/IMG_0797-scaled-1-1536x1152.webp","2048x2048":"https:\/\/conserva-aves.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/IMG_0797-scaled-1-2048x1536.webp","trp-custom-language-flag":"https:\/\/conserva-aves.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/IMG_0797-scaled-1-16x12.webp","et-pb-post-main-image":"https:\/\/conserva-aves.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/IMG_0797-scaled-1-400x250.webp","et-pb-post-main-image-fullwidth":"https:\/\/conserva-aves.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/IMG_0797-scaled-1-1080x675.webp","et-pb-portfolio-image":"https:\/\/conserva-aves.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/IMG_0797-scaled-1-400x284.webp","et-pb-portfolio-module-image":"https:\/\/conserva-aves.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/IMG_0797-scaled-1-510x382.webp","et-pb-portfolio-image-single":"https:\/\/conserva-aves.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/IMG_0797-scaled-1-1080x810.webp","et-pb-gallery-module-image-portrait":"https:\/\/conserva-aves.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/IMG_0797-scaled-1-400x516.webp","et-pb-post-main-image-fullwidth-large":"https:\/\/conserva-aves.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/IMG_0797-scaled-1-2560x1800.webp","et-pb-image--responsive--desktop":"https:\/\/conserva-aves.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/IMG_0797-scaled-1-1280x960.webp","et-pb-image--responsive--tablet":"https:\/\/conserva-aves.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/IMG_0797-scaled-1-980x735.webp","et-pb-image--responsive--phone":"https:\/\/conserva-aves.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/IMG_0797-scaled-1-480x360.webp","full":"https:\/\/conserva-aves.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/IMG_0797-scaled-1.webp"},"dsm_comment_count":0,"yoast_head":"\n