I’m back from Brazil where I attended the 2024 Avistar Bird Fair in São Paulo as an invited speaker! I spent the three days of the fair connecting with people from across Brazil, Latin America, and the world, talking about recreational birding tourism and economically driven bird conservation initiatives. The fair took place on the University of São Paulo campus, a huge landscape of South American modernist architecture draped in vines and trees. This was late fall in the southern hemisphere, with balmy but not oppressively hot temperatures.
Optimism and a creative outlook fueled this birding fair. Speakers and topics ranged from science to tourism to art and music to education to conservation to video game design (imagine gaming in the Atlantic Rainforest with birdsong surrounding!), and 50 percent of presenters were female. Most of the presentations and sessions were in Portuguese, some in Spanish and just a handful in English (like mine). My one regret is that I didn’t understand more of the presentations for my lack of Portuguese facility.
I spoke about my 12 years covering birding culture and women in birding for both mainstream and recreational birding media. It was my first time presenting about my own career path, and a fun summary of the topics and people I’ve covered over the years. By far my favorite part was the question and answer from the audience—it’s a time to directly engage with them and understand what they want to know more about, which inevitably informs future presentations.
Photo by Sandra Beltrao.
I also participated in a round table discussing challenges faced by working mothers in professional birding especially for female birding guides. Judith Mirembe and Tati Pongiluppi were my co-speakers on the round table, both of them professional guides and mothers of young children. The general questions we’d planned evolved into a heart-felt and emotional discussion shared with the audience, with great questions from both men and women.
Ana Julia Cano and Judith Mirembe reviewing the festival’s program.
Screenshot from Instagram stories of Rafaela Bisacchi of our mothers in birding round table, 5/19/2024. Left to right: Judith Mirembe, Tati Pongiluppi, Bryony Angell, and Ana Julia Cano. Photos by Rafaela Bisacchi.
Participating in this round table was the highlight of my Avistar experience, sharing that depth of feeling with my co-speakers and the community listening to and brainstorming with us for ways birding industry can accommodate working mothers who want to continue guiding. The field of bird guiding stands to lose tremendous talent if it cannot find a way to retain these dedicated women. I’m saying this AND I have ideas for mitigating the loss. This isn’t just a line in the sand; we are opening a conversation with industry for how to actively reverse the loss of this female talent among bird guides. Read more about how the birding scene can accommodate caregivers here and here, we in this role have been thinking on this for a while, it is not new.
My biggest observation of the Avistar fair: the youth of wild bird advocates in Latin America! This was a much younger crowd of birding festival goers than I’d ever see back in the states. The youth and diversity of Brazilian birders and conservation advocates is gratifying to see.
Brazilian ornithologists and birders who identify as female have established Ornitomulheres, a group working to amplify and promote women in science and birdwatching in Brazil. The future of bird conservation in Latin America is driven by incredible country nationals, many of them young and female!
The Ornitomulheres round table discussion at 2024 Avistar, complete with supportive spouse and daughter in attendance. The support of men is critical in elevating the voices of women.
Thank you Avistar for inviting me as a guest and FAPESP (the Sao Paulo Science Research Agency) for covering my expenses for the travel to and accommodations for the festival. Thank you to EMBRATUR for covering the EXP (experimental) birding trip that followed the birding fair (next blog post!).
I am grateful to Tati Pongiluppi for sharing my name with the Avistar festival organizers; to Guto Carvalho for his creative and expansive thinking for what and who to include in a birding fair; and to my friends and family who offered advice for lecture preparedness and helped take care of my kids while I was away! This trip is one that would have been challenging for me to pull off on my own. There it is—that community of birders (and the people who love them)!
This post was updated 5/28/2024 to reflect accurate attribution for the expenses paid to bring me to the Avistar event.