Birds and People is a ten-year-long, groundbreaking collaboration between the publishers

Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...

and

BirdLife International BirdLife International is a global partnership of non-governmental organizations that strives to conserve birds and their habitats. BirdLife International's priorities include preventing extinction of bird species, identifying and safeguarding ...

, to survey and document worldwide, the cultural significance of birds.Birdwatch
/ref> The Birds and People project involves an open

internet forum An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporar ...

, for individuals worldwide to document their reflections, experiences and stories about birds. Established by the leading naturalist and author

Mark Cocker Mark Cocker (born 1959) is a British author and naturalist. He lives with his wife, Mary Muir, and two daughters in Claxton, Norfolk; the countryside around Claxton is a theme for two of his twelve books. Cocker has written extensively for ...

in collaboration with the eminent wildlife photographer

David Tipling David Tipling is a professional wildlife photographer. He has won the documentary award for the European Nature Photographer of the Year for his work on emperor penguins. He is the author or commissioned photographer for more than 30 books that ...

and the Natural history specialist,

Jonathan Elphick Jonathan Elphick is a British natural history writer, editor and consultant. He is an eminent ornithologist, a qualified zoologist; Fellow of the Zoological Society of London and a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London. He is author of ''The ...

, the Birds and People project is a new experiment in natural history and

cultural anthropology Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology, which perceives cultural variation as a subset of a posited anthropological constant. The portma ...

"The sense of freedom evoked by birds in flight has been a source of inspiration alike to
tribal communities The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. This definition is contested, in part due to conflic ...
and the world’s major
civilisation A civilization (or civilisation) is any complex society characterized by the development of State (polity), a state, social stratification, urban area, urbanization, and Symbol, symbolic systems of communication beyond natural language, natur ...
s. Writers, poets, artists and composers have drawn on the qualities of birds for thousands of years. Today birds often play the role of ambassador in our entire relationship with nature. For
environmentalist An environmentalist is a person who is concerned with and/or advocates for the protection of the environment. An environmentalist can be considered a supporter of the goals of the environmental movement, "a political and ethical movement that se ...
s they are collectively the miner’s canary, their populations helping us to gauge the health of natural environments from the inner-city to the remote Arctic tundra. Yet our connections with birds far exceed any simple utilitarian value. Very often at a domestic level they are cherished for their own sake, as simple companions, as aesthetic adornments and as expression of some unspoken bond between ourselves and the rest of nature. Birds and People website
/ref>

The resulting work is intended as a summary of the current state of birdlife worldwide. Cocker suggests that birds are the miner's canary for the natural world. However a further aim of the ''Birds and People'' project is to provide a panoramic survey of the multitudinous way in which birds enter and enrich human lives.

"The forum aims to bring together first-hand accounts from the staff and members of BirdLife Partners, and from the wider public. The organisers hope that people from every country and territory involved in BirdLife will put forward the view of their respective nation or territory"

Loss of

biodiversity Biodiversity or biological diversity is the variety and variability of life on Earth. Biodiversity is a measure of variation at the genetic (''genetic variability''), species (''species diversity''), and ecosystem (''ecosystem diversity'') l ...

is invariably considered only in terms of its ecological and environmental consequences. Birds and People is intended to highlight how a decline in species inflicts parallel losses upon the very fabric of human cultures.

References

External links

The Birds and People internet forum

{{DEFAULTSORT:Birds And People Bird conservation Birds in popular culture