Neotropical Flyways Project

The diversity of bird species in Central and South America is astounding. in Panamá alone, over 1,000 bird species have been observed – more than in the U.S.A. and Canada combined! Of these, more than 50 species, with combined populations representing more than 1 billion individuals, are considered Neotropical migratory birds: those that travel between North America and Central/South America each year.

Neotropical migrants are vital to the health of American ecosystems because they provide services such as pest control and seed dispersal. However, many migratory species have been experiencing severe population declines over the past few decades, with those that migrate farthest disappearing  the quickest.

Although Neotropical migratory birds are well studied in both their breeding and nonbreeding grounds, little is known about their lives during migration even though this is when the majority of mortality occurs. To fill this critical gap in our knowledge, the Neotropical Flyways Project was born in 2016 with the goal of identifying migration routes and key stopover sites – where the energy for migration is obtained – across six countries in Central and South America (Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Belize).

Panamá is only a small part of the overall project, but it is a unique location for this type of study. Its narrow geography and habitat diversity tend to concentrate migrants into larger groups than observed elsewhere, and Panama is known as an important point of arrival and departure for the species that migrate directly through the Caribbean Sea.