BirdLife International Red-footed Booby  Black Noddy with chick BirdLife International is a global Partnership of conservation organizations that strives to conserve birds, their habitats and global biodiversity, working with people towards sustainability in the use of natural resources. It is the World's largest partnership of conservation organizations. A major concern for BirdLife in the Pacific is seabird conservation: Infinity Expeditions is excited to be able to assist them in their endeavors to protect these creatures. Seabirds are in a minority with humans in the Pacific by directly linking terrestrial and marine resources, but they face serious threats in both environments. On land, invasive species are decimating nesting colonies (islands of the tropical Pacific formerly held no species of mammal apart from bats; hence seabirds are not evolved to cope with these introduced predators); and at sea, bycatch in fisheries poses a serious threat to seabirds and other marine wildlife.
A primary hindrance to implementing effective conservation actions is simply a lack of information. The Pacific remains one of the most poorly studied regions. The most comprehensive survey to date was in 1922, and many islands have never been visited by biologists. Infinity Expeditions and BirdLife plan to visit the remote Yasayasa islands in Fiji to collect information on breeding seabirds and at-sea distributions, as well as threats to these islands’ biodiversity. Information from this trip will feed into BirdLife’s work to identify Important Bird Areas (IBAs) throughout the region, key sites at which they can target conservation activities both at-sea and on land. Contact Jez Bird, Marine IBA Co-ordinator for BirdLife Pacific Secretariat, for more information on this story, jez@birdlifepacific.org.fj.
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