At WeBird we believe that by empowering local guides, birding tourism can contribute to the ownership of conservation efforts, the dissemination of local and Indigenous knowledge, and the economic and ecological well-being of whole communities. 

However, there exists a mismatch between local ‘suppliers’ of knowledge, i.e. local birding guides, and the broader birding-focused market. For local guides, it can be a daunting challenge to try and ‘break into’ the market, which relies largely on word-of-mouth on the one hand, and medium to large birding tourism agents on the other. Getting work through agents is generally limited to a lucky few guides, while word-of-mouth only gets you so far. This unintentional gatekeeping is what WeBird will address through the development of its guide platform.

By offering guides direct access to tourists – and of course vice versa – we believe that we can deliver commercial opportunities to a wider and more diverse group of guides. Similarly, by making guides more easily available to clients, we believe we can expand the group of people engaging in birding activities. The WeBird platform lowers the threshold to join in birding activities – both long holidays and day trips – for both guides and clients.

In the long term, the entire world of birding will profit from this expansion. Agents and operators – but also others professionally engaged with birding such as scientists, publishers, optics companies, … – stand to gain access to a much larger pool of potential guides, including those that may otherwise never have come to their attention. And most importantly perhaps: an increase in access to birding, can only lead to an increased awareness of the magnificence of avian life, as well as its vulnerability and need for protection.