Guyana scores with international birders
Guyana Chronicle
December 3, 2006
SEVEN international birding tour operators who were here recently plan to start selling Guyana as an ideal destination for bird watching, tour organisers said.
The tour operators and two media representatives from the United Kingdom visited several locations in Guyana from November 12-26 as part of the birding tourism programme that is a joint partnership between the Guyana Tourism Authority (GTA) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)/Guyana Trade and Investment Support (GTIS) project.
After spending nine days birding throughout Guyana, including stops at Georgetown’s Botanical Gardens, the Shanklands, Baganara and Arrowpoint resorts, Kaieteur Falls, Surama Village, Iwokrama, Wowetta Village, Rock View Lodge, and Karanambu Ranch, the nine visitors concluded that Guyana is a fantastic wilderness.
For Guyana to better market itself as a destination, Tim Earl, a guide for The Travelling Naturalist, pointed out that the country needs to protect the wilderness, improve accommodation facilities and make sure that prices are competitive.
“We’ve been to most parts of the world between us and I can tell you that Guyana stands up well in comparison with other places,” he stated.
GTIS said he noted that Guyana’s advantage over its main competitors (Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, Northern Brazil, and Suriname) is that it is English-speaking and is much easier to access in terms of flights and travel time, particularly for the North American and European market.
According to Earl, while the team was not able to see all the 800 species of birds, they saw 376 in the ten days that they travelled around the country.
“That’s a big score. The birds you have here are accessible. The Cock-of-the-Rock is up there with the great birds of the world, and you’ve got them here in Guyana and we can get in to see them easily,” he noted.
GTIS said he pointed out that one of their favourite places for birding was the Iwokrama forest, with one of the highlights being the canopy walkway.
However, he noted that to attract birders to a new country, and keep them coming, conservation issues must be made a high priority.
“You need to find out how to allow people to see these birds without disturbing them,” he posited.
The operators, he said, felt that Guyana must set up national parks to protect the natural resources.
“These birds and wildlife will move away or die out if you don’t protect them and if they go people will not come back here,” he said.
“People visiting countries like to go to national parks. They like to feel that the country they are visiting thinks enough about its habitat and environment to protect it. Guyana could do with some. National parks are big magnets. People respect governments that set up national parks,” he noted.
However, GTIS said, despite this recommendation the tour operators said they would feature Guyana as a destination on their website and in their newsletters, and many plan to give lectures on Guyana to their local naturalist and birding clubs.
The media representatives who were on the FAM trip will also be publishing articles in Neotropical Birding and Birdwatch magazines.
The guides also said they would be writing articles for other publications including widely read newspapers such as The Guernsey Press.