TURNERS FALLS — Warblers, humingbirds, and raptors are among the most enjoyed and anticipated migratory birds to watch for during spring and summer. But these migrants spend most of their lives not with us but in the “new world tropics,” or “neo-tropics,” of Mexico, Central and South America.
Ezekiel Jakub, a Greenfield native and ornithologist known for his research on neo-tropical birds, will give a talk at noon Saturday at the Turners Falls Discovery Center. The topics will include how Jakub and his wife, Melva Olmos, established a rural bird guide training program for impoverished Panamanians, to boost their income and slow down deforestation. They’ll also talk about why conservation efforts in Central America matter in Massachusetts.
Jakub and Olmos, a jaguar researcher, run Conservación Panamá, a nonprofit, Greenfield-based organization that strives to help local Panamanian communities in the conservation and management of natural resources. They have developed an ecotourism guide-training program that enables impoverished farmers to earn a better living than they made by slashing and burning forests for subsistence farming.
“We work in an indigenous area where 80 percent of the people live in poverty,” said Jakub. “There is no electricity, no roads, no plumbing, no water. We go into these super-poor communities, and teach them to be eco-tour guides, so they can buy food.”
Jakub said those trained through this program are given binoculars, bird guidebooks, spotting scopes and the knowledge to take tourism groups who come to see bordering conservation areas. A Pananmanian eco-tourism guide can make more money from one four-hour tour than he or she would in 40 hours of farm work.
He estimates that being a bird-guide raises a family’s income by about 25 percent per month in a wild natural area that attracts U.S. birdwatchers, as well as visitors from Argentina, Chile, and Mexico. The practice may also give the local population more reason to preserve natural habitat for birds in danger of extinction, like the critically endangered glow-throated hummingbird or the rapidly declining golden winged warbler.
The talk is free, and it includes a multi-media presentation with photographs, bird songs and video of the tropical rainforest. Learn about their work in neo-tropical migrant conservation.