SAVE Brasil

The Important Bird Areas (IBAs) Programme aims to identify, monitor and protect a network of areas for the conservation of birds and other biodiversity. It is part of the BirdLife International's global strategy which has already identified more than 7,500 IBAs in nearly 170 countries.

IBAs are key sites for conservation – small enough to be conserved in their entirety and often already part of a protected-area network. They do one (or more) of three things:

Hold significant numbers of one or more globally threatened species
Are one of a set of sites that together hold a suite of restricted-range species or biome-restricted species
Have exceptionally large numbers of migratory or congregatory birds (species that use specific areas as breeding colonies, wintering grounds or migratory bottlenecks)

The IBA criteria are internationally agreed, standardised, quantitative and scientifically defensible. By definition, an IBA is an internationally agreed priority for conservation action.

Important Bird Areas (IBAs) in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest

In 2006, SAVE Brasil launched the book Áreas Importantes para a Conservação das Aves no Brasil: parte 1 – estados do domínio da Mata Atlântica (Important Bird Areas in Brazil), which describes the 163 most important sites for birds in the 15 Brazilian states that contain Atlantic forest: Alagoas, Bahia, Ceará, Espírito Santo, Minas Gerais, Paraíba, Paraná, Pernambuco, Piauí, Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Norte, Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, São Paulo and Sergipe. In these states occur 83% of the Brazilian threatened species. Although focusing the Atlantic forest biome, this work considered the whole territory of each state, consequently, IBAs containing Caatinga (Brazilian semi-arid vegetation), Cerrado (Brazilian savannas) and Pampa (Brazilian grasslands) biomes were also included.

Amongst the 163 IBAs, some are considered irreplaceable as they hold significant numbers of one or more species at risk of extinction. These areas are found in a critical situation and continue suffering direct (illegal capture, hunting) or indirect (environment destruction) aggressions. For this reason, BirdLife/SAVE Brasil identified, following practical criteria, 16 priority areas for immediate action, what corresponds to 10% of the 163 IBAs identified.

A great part of the most threatened species in Brazil occurs exactly in these 16 IBAs. BirdLife/SAVE Brasil efforts brought a renewed attention to these areas, and resulted in important achievements as the creation of the Murici Ecological Station (in 2001) and the recognition of some of them as extremely relevant for conservation (Serra das Lontras and Boa Nova). They also brought a new hope of survival to some of the most threatened species in the world.