MIGRATORY RAPTORS

Raptors (birds of prey) constitute a diverse group of land-based predators that occur across a broad range of habitats throughout the Americas. All 33 species of raptors that occur in the United States are migratory; at least five of the species are largely transequatorial migrants, and all but six regularly migrate into Latin America and the Caribbean. Because they exist at the tops of many food chains, raptors are especially sensitive to alterations in ecosystem structure and energy flow. This, in turn, makes them particularly effective sentinels of ecological change. Unfortunately, raptors also are secretive, wide-ranging, area-sensitive predators, characteristics that make their populations logistically difficult and financially prohibitive to survey and monitor. As a result, a lack of information regarding regional and continental populations continues to plague management decisions, particularly in the tropics. Raptors are diurnal (active at daytime) migrants, and one potentially cost-effective method for monitoring regional, continental, and sometimes global populations of these birds is sampling their numbers using visual observation at traditional migration bottlenecks and concentration points.

Diurnal raptor migration has been studied extensively for many years in North America, Europe and the Middle East. For this reason, there is considerable knowledge of most routes, the extent of migratory periods, and the abundance of the various migratory species in these regions. Unfortunately, the situation in Central and South America is much different. Little information on raptor migration exists for this part of the world. Several authors like Carriker (1910), Skutch (1945), Slud (1964), Stiles and Skutch (1989), and Hernández and Zook (1993) have reported some aspects of the raptor migration in Costa Rica. Even so, information on the subject remains partial and rudimentary.

Although the Nearctic (northern parts of the American Continent and Greenland) migrants that pass throughout Costa Rica represent only a small proportion of the country's raptor diversity, the spectacular nature of their movements offers considerable opportunity for increasing regional and international ecotourism and, more importantly, local conservation community-based efforts.

From August to December, raptors mainly migrate over the Caribbean lowlands, where they gather along a single route passing through the Talamanca region, a 2,800 km2 mixture of forests, agriculture, banana plantations and undeveloped coastline, in southeastern Costa Rica. With the Talamanca Mountain Range on one side and the Caribbean coastline on the other, this funnel-like lowlands narrows near the Kéköldi Indigenous Reserve, to only 5 km (3 miles) between the mountains and the ocean. This "bottleneck" for raptors, which is used by most raptor migrants in the region, is an ideal place to count and monitor raptor migration.

From August to December 2000, the Migratory Raptor Conservation Project began standardized, full-season counts at a single watchsite in the Kéköldi indigenous reserve in southern, Caribbean-slope, Talamanca, Costa Rica.

The Migratory Raptor Conservation project started as a joint effort between local and international organizations and now is owned by the Kéköldi People and includes the active participation of the local communities. We are dedicated to uniting human development and biodiversity conservation in the Talamanca region in southeast Costa Rica, an extraordinary area that holds more than 2% of the world's biodiversity, and that contains a unique cultural mix of Native Americans, Black Caribbeans and Spanish-speaking “Campesinos”. Kéköldi Migratory Hawkwatch Costa Rica Feb 2nd, 2021.

Conservation Objectives:

• Conduct season-long migrating raptor counts at the Kéköldi watchsite.
• Create a long-term database for raptor-migration and conservation efforts in Costa Rica.
• Compare the numbers of migrant raptors in the season from August to December to other long-term monitoring centers including Veracruz River of Raptors, Mexico, and Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, USA, and submit them to the HMANA (Hawk Migration Association of North America) network and have the Kéköldi watchsite described in Raptor Watch.
• Study raptor migration dynamics and their relation to the regional weather conditions and compare them with the temperate-zone migration ecology.
• Study the use of habitat by migrating raptors and other migratory birds, for urgent habitat conservation, especially in forest areas.
• Study local raptor species and possible threats to their populations in the Talamanca region and develop conservation initiatives.
• Encourage the continuous participation of local community members in all the project’s activities.
• Design and initiate a raptor-oriented environmental education program to introduce local people both to phenomenon of long-distance migration, to ecology of local raptors, and to the importance of habitat conservation.
• Promote the creation of exchange programs with other raptor conservation organizations for training of staff and local community members in conservation efforts.
• Develop ecotourism activities with the help of the local indigenous community, to create new income opportunities for the community and for the self-sustainability of the project.
• Share all our results with the local and international community.

ACI is a non-profit organization founded in 1967, whose main goal is to promote programs of intercultural learning and international volunteer service (IVS) for people from all around of the world, facilitating their experience in social and ecological projects, developing global citizens. ACI wants to contribute to solidarity and friendship between the different societies of our globalized world, to sustainable human development, and personal growth of our participants.