​​​​Save Brasil, a non-government organization focused in the preservation of birds, celebrated last Saturday (5/9), the Global Big Day, an initiative aimed at encouraging people to stop their activities to observe and count the bird species in the planet. The NOG, a member of international Bird Life global alliance and supported by Neoenergia Institute (NI), promoted a one-week event, intended to raise awareness of the society on the need of preserving and mapping migratory bird species around the world. One of the initiatives was the holding of the online live event Flyways - Preservation of Shorebirds - with the attendance of IN's CEO, Renata Chagas, Save Brasil's Project manager, Juliana Bosi, and the organization's Field technician, João Damasceno.  

During the event, Juliana explained the Flyways relevance (Flyways means the seven routes used by migratory birds to travel around the world, two of them in Brazil: Atlantic and Central routes. 

“In Brazil, our project focuses on Atlantic route flyways, as we needed to understand the importance of the Northeast region in this migratory movement and, supported by Neoenergia Institute, we started with a bird census, in 2015 to carry out this mapping. To get an idea, the migratory birds appearing in the Northeast and North of Brazil come from the Arctic (North Pole), where they are born and breed. When summer ends in Arctic, they migrate towards South. Some stay in Northeast, other proceed towards Patagonia", says Juliana Bosi, from Save Brasil. 

Based on the data collected, it is possible to identify which species are in risk, said João Damasceno technician. For example, we are able to notice that Red Knots (Maçaricos de Papo Vermelho, in Portuguese) show up in expressive quantities (and 1% stay in Potiguar Basin before going back to North Pole). So Flyways is very important to think on what actions we may adopt to protect them during this stay". ​

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From the 20 species using Potiguar Basin, 14 are migratory birds that stay between September and April and six stay over the entire year, such as the Great-billed seed-finch (Bicuda in Portuguese), which is resident". We perform this census with field visits, but also through the e-bird app, through which many volunteers living in this route input data", highlighted João. 

For Neoenergia Institute's CEO, Renata Chagas, the importance of the bird mapping is key to preserve the environment and biodiversity, which is one of the social investment pillars of the institute, and of the contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals. 

“Counting birds is helpful in the diagnosis not only for their preservation, but also indicates other ecosystem-related factors of the environments where they live. The mapping of the migratory process helps us to perceive the Nature's perfection, and to understand how so little birds are able to fly thousands of miles, informing and mobilizing people of these places that do not notice this travelling, as well as providing data to the scientific community, engaging them in their preservation, which is our next step in this project", concludes Renata. 

For five years Flyways Brasil has been supported by Neoenergia Institute and, in this period of COVID-19 pandemic, it has proposed a different Global Big Day, due to the need of social isolation. “We asked people to go to their gardens and open areas, without leaving their homes, in order to observe and record the bird species in the surroundings", says Juliana. 

Learn more, watch the online live in: Brazilian Birds Preservation

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This initiative is part of theIberdrola group's response to the Coronav​írus​.