Birding Festivals in Honduras
Content submitted by Choose Honduras (Honduras Turismo y Marketing S.A.) – Gustavo Ustariz
Submited Date : 15/10/2019
Participants from our first birding festival in Pico Bonito National Park, March 2019

Honduras Turismo y Marketing S.A., organizes birding festivals geared towards locals to create interest in birdwatching as a healthy and rewarding hobby and promote conservation under the theme "healthy habitats for birds are also healthy for humans". Our birding festivals include presentations & workshops in topics relating to birds, birding, tourism and conservation, and are complemented with birding walks led by local birding guides and volunteers from the local birding clubs.

Our first festival in the Caribbean Coast of Honduras in March 2019 won the Mindful Birding Award for promoting ethical birding (the 1st international recipient of the award).

Our second festival in Marcala (scheduled for November 2019) will focus on the importance of tree-shade grown coffee habitat for migratory birds from North America. During the festival we will join in the celebration of World Migratory Bird Day. The Marcala Birding Festival will also showcase local coffee farmers that are diversifying their farm income with agritourism as a way to counteract issues in coffee production from climate change and volatile coffee prices.

Our third festival is scheduled for Copan in 2020 and will focus on birds in Mayan mythology and iconography.

For the logistics of the festivals we hire national birding guides as trip leaders and source food, entertainment, ground transportation, and lodging from locally owned and operated entrepreneurs and companies.

We are looking for sponsors to increase the size of the festivals, currently we can organize for a maximum of 50 participants. We are also interested in sponsors to subsidize the cost of the birding festivals to local participants and to youth members of local birding clubs.
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