FGASA and BirdLife South Africa have been working together to advance sustainable tourism and the gold standards of guiding. We were recently featured in BirdLife South Africa’s Avitourism Donor Report for 2025, read the excerpt below.
BirdLife South Africa and the Field Guides Association of South Africa (FGASA) share a common vision: to advance bird conservation through responsible avitourism, professional guiding excellence, and meaningful public engagement.
This partnership is built on a shared commitment to ensuring that avitourism contributes positively to biodiversity conservation while creating sustainable livelihoods. In 2026, FGASA will be coming on board as an official donor to the organisation’s Avitourism Project for an initial 1-year period.
Central to this collaboration is the training, accreditation, certification, and professional development of specialist bird guides. By working together, the two organisations promote high ethical standards, consistent assessment frameworks, and clear professional expectations, ensuring that bird guiding is recognised as a credible and respected career within South Africa’s ecotourism industry.
Together, we will develop and formalise a specialist bird-guiding career pathway under the FGASA umbrella, ensuring its recognition within the ecotourism sector. This pathway not only supports the progression of skills and professional growth for guides but also strengthens the role of birds and biodiversity within the broader wildlife economy.
Through joint initiatives, including formal, structured training programmes, assessments, and awareness campaigns, the partnership amplifies public understanding of the value of birds and specialist bird guiding, and promotes responsible and ethical avitourism practices, ensuring that communities benefit meaningfully from the growth of avitourism. In doing so, we will collectively lay the foundation for a professional, ethical, and conservation-driven avitourism sector that benefits both people and nature.