Last Day Wheatear
Monday, 18 April 2016
Thursday, 4 February 2016
Great-Spotted-Woodpecker
Great-Spotted-Woodpecker-Furen
Based on its decades of work in developing
countries, WICE
has come to the conclusion that visitation of protected areas is indispensable
for their conservation. Areas with little or no visitation are under far greater
pressure than those that enjoy significant visitation. Over the years it has
sought for ways of promoting interest in protected areas in developing and
transition countries. In 1997, I was
attending a training course in software use and web site development, and one of
my instructors showed a website that - at the time - had some of the heaviest
traffic on the internet. So he thought, how I can I put that knowledge to use
for promoting visitation to protected areas. So I though how I could
get the attention of the most enthusiastic nature travelers, the birdwatchers,
then he could help them find those areas and thus contribute to their
conservation by having bird watchers visit protected areas in developing
countries.
Knowing that birders want the national checklist of the birds of the
country they are going to visit, I figured that I could get your attention by
providing the national bird list of every country of the world in one website.
Once having your attention, the website could then show information on the
protected areas of the country of your interest and eventually ways on how to
visit them. That was the idea behing Birdlist and Nature Worldwide and the
reason why I created the website.
Although, some
countries are still missing, we can proudly say that we currently cover about
80% of the countries of the world and 90% of the world's land mass.
We know that our lists are not yet complete and often based on potential
distribution rather than confirmed observations, but we continuously get emails with corrections and
official up-to-date bird lists. In fact those emails are very important
in motivating us and that is why we continue providing more
information about birds, national parks and nature in general.
Great-Knot
Great-Knot-Sanbanze
Why Birds Lists?
Nature organizations are the single most important force driving the conservation movement
in North America and Europe, and increasingly in developing countries
as well.
Nature organizations may differ greatly in their objectives: Some
organizations bring people together who love to study and enjoy nature,
such as bird organizations, like the Royal Society for the protection of
Birds in the UK, Vogelbescherming in the Netherlands, the Sociedad
Española de OrnitologÃa, the Naturschutz Bund Deutschland, different
Ornithologische Vereinigungen in Deutschland, Audubon Society and the
Sierra Club in the USA, lots of botanical societies all over the world,
etc. Given the passion of their members, most of these organizations promote nature conservation in
a variety of ways, like organizing field
trips, promoting love and concern for nature through educational programmes and through political lobbying.
Other
organizations promote concern for conservation of nature or of the environment
in general. However, the
European and North-American conservation experience
has taught us, that the larger conservation organizations are those that
promote
active enjoyment of nature and that help nature friends to go into the
field and
build friendships among each other. Among the nature friends, we see
that birdwatchers often are the most active and enthusiastic people to
go out into
nature. Birders keep their own lifetime lists of birds and jointly they maintain
bird lists for regions and countries. That is why I
started thinking about catering to the interest of birdwatchers when I
wanted to design a conservation website in 1997.
Birdwatchers in the developed world are also some of the most
active travelers to developing countries to expand their own bird list and to get
to know completely different avifaunas of countries far away from their homes.
When traveling to another country to go birding, these birdwatchers love to have
access to the birds list of the country of their visit. In many
cases, it also is very difficult for them to find the national parks and
nature
reserves where they can go on a birding. Travel to developing countries
requires
proper preparation and it is difficult to find the really good places,
like birding hotspots, great areas for trekking, backpacking, rafting,
canoeing,
biking and other forms of ecotourism.
In developing countries, we see a dramatic problem that there
are many national parks and nature reserves that are under appreciated. Many of
them hardly ever are visited, because there is little information about them,
even less information on how to get to them and where to stay once you know that
they exist. This leads to the situation that local populations see little
benefit in the conservation coming from those protected areas. In Africa, the
protected areas are the few places left with abundant wildlife and poachers like
to go in and hunt the protected animals. In many countries, landless farmers
settle in protected areas and cut themselves a little farm field from the
forest. Worldwide, we have seen that visitation of protected areas - ecotourism
- is one of the most effective ways to promote acceptance of and respect for
protected areas among local inhabitants, as ecotourism creates employment.Birdwatching Japan
Japan Nature Guide's Recommended Short Birding Tours
We have a range of recommended itineraries:
1, 2, and 3 day tours based in Tokyo. Birds to look for depend on the season of your visit.
3-day tour of the Izu Islands for seabirds and endemic land birds: albatrosses, Streaked Shearwater, Tristram's Petrel, Black Woodpigeon, Izu Thrush, Pleske's Warbler, Ijima's Warbler depending on the season.
4-5 day winter tour (December to March) to southern Kyushu for a wide range of species including wintering cranes: White-naped Crane, Hooded Crane, Sandhill Crane, Common Crane.
4-5 day waterfowl special (October only) visiting north and east Hokkaido for: Taiga Bean Goose,Tundra Bean Goose, Greater White-fronted Goose, Lesser White-fronted Goose, Snow Goose,Brent Goose, Whooper Swan and Bewick's (Tundra) Swan.
5-6 day winter tour of east Hokkaido.
5-6 day summer tour of east Hokkaido.
6-day tour of the Ryukyu Islands (Okinawa and Amami Oshima) for the central and northern endemics: Okinawa Rail, Pryer's Woodpecker, Amami Woodcock, Ryukyu Robin.
7-day tour of the Nansei Shoto (Yaeyama, Okinawa and Amami Oshima) for the southern, central and northern endemics: Ryukyu Serpent Eagle, Malayan Night Heron, Okinawa Rail, Pryer's Woodpecker, Amami Woodcock, Ryukyu Robin.
Greater Scaup
Greater-Scaup-Sanbanze
Q:I Question: Intend to bring my pet bird with me to Japan from a foreign country. Are there any procedures that are required for this?
Answer :Although an entry quarantine inspection will be not required when you bring your pet bird to Japan, there is other restrictions by other ministries.
Q:I Question: Intend to bring my pet bird with me to Japan from a foreign country. Are there any procedures that are required for this?
Answer :Although an entry quarantine inspection will be not required when you bring your pet bird to Japan, there is other restrictions by other ministries.
Wednesday, 13 January 2016
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