Representatives of eight international birding organizations and a birding writer enjoyed over ten birding destinations during a ten-day trip to the best bird-watching areas in Guyana.
The international tour operators specialize in bird-watching tours and they were accompanied by a North American media representative. The familiarization (FAM) trip, which started on November 2 and ended on November 12, was organized by the Guyana Tourism Authority (GTA) and the Guyana Trade and Investment Support (GTIS) project Birding Tourism November 2-12. GTIS is a government of Guyana and US government project under the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
A GTIS press release said the participants explored bird-watching areas like Georgetown, Mahaica River, Shanklands Rainforest Resort in the Essequibo River, Iwokrama Field Station, Iwokrama Canopy Walkway, Atta Rainforest Lodge, Rock View Lodge, Surama Village, Wowetta Village and Karanambu Ranch and Kaieteur Falls.
According to GTIS, after success in the United Kingdom birding market (where Guyana is now being touted as the hot new Neotropical birding destination), the fourth birding FAM trip focused on participants who could help raise Guyana’s profile in the North American bird-watching tourism market.
Participants from the US included Nature Odysseys, the worldwide travel program of the US National Audubon Society, which has more than 50 chapters and Mass Audubon Travel, which with more than 100,000 members is the largest conservation organization in New England. Also represented were Caligo Ventures, the tour operators often credited with putting Trinidad and Tobago and the famed Asa Wright Nature Centre on the international map and Naturalist Journeys, a tour operator that works closely with the US Audubon Society, Smithsonian and Harvard Zoology Museum. Talon Tours, which provides access to the large California and New Zealand markets; and BirdsTreks, which runs bird-watching trips solely to neo-tropical destinations were also on the FAM trip.
Additional tour operators on the trip included Limosa Holidays, one of the oldest birding and nature tour operators in the UK, and Kolibri Tours, which is based in Peru and is one of the largest birding tour operators in South America.
Also on the FAM trip was Rick Wright, the editor of the American Birding Association publication, Winging It. Wright, will be writing an article on his experience in Guyana for the magazine, which has a base readership of more than 18,000.
The release said that like the three previous birding tourism FAM trips, “the experience of the group, and the feedback given, was overwhelmingly positive.”
Mark Heddon of Caligo Ventures was quoted in the release as saying, “Like a lot of Americans I didn’t know much about Guyana. After visiting, all I can say is wow, what a wonderful place. To see such wide expanses of pristine, undisturbed habitat, and to see so many spectacular birds thriving in that habitat, was a great experience.”
“Guyana has great potential for bird watching tourism,” Gunnar Engblom of Kolibri Tours was quoted as saying in the press release. “Kaieteur Falls, lodges, ranches and community tourism projects such as Surama
