Great Green MacawPhoto: Artush
About us
Our conservation partners
Every bird on your list is there because somebody is looking after it. The forest a Great Green Macaw nests in, the pine slope a Wilson's Warbler leaves every September to spend the winter in our highlands. We have planned trips around those birds since 2004, so we decided it was time to give something back to the people who keep them flying.
We started in November 2026 with two partners. One works here in Costa Rica. The other works in Colorado, where our US office is, on the birds that winter with us.
Macaw Recovery Network, Costa Rica
A Costa Rican non-profit bringing back the country's two macaws. The Great Green Macaw, the bigger and rarer of the two, is down to fewer than 1,000 birds in the world by their count, and you can still see it in the Sarapiquí lowlands, where they run the Sarapiquí Rainforest Reserve.
They also run the Punta Islita Wild Macaw Reserve on the Nicoya Peninsula, where you can watch wild Scarlet Macaws on a tour booked with them.
We support the Macaw Recovery Network.
Bird Conservancy of the Rockies, Colorado
Their mission, in their own words: conserving birds and their habitats through science, education and land stewardship.
Why a Colorado group on a Costa Rica site? A lot of the birds you will see here in our winter nest up there. The Wilson's Warbler arrives in our highlands from late September. The Western Tanager turns up on the dry Pacific side from late October. Looking after them in the Rockies is half the job, and our own office is in Boulder.
We support Bird Conservancy of the Rockies.
Pack for a Purpose, San José
A few school supplies or baby items take very little room in a suitcase and mean a great deal here. Through Pack for a Purpose, our travellers bring supplies for two programmes in San José.
Educación Plus works with 450 schoolchildren from some of our communities most in need, with textbooks, uniforms and school supplies, and weekly activities that give them a safe place to spend their time.
Hogar Infantil Blanca Flor, the White Flower Children's Home, is a temporary home for infants and toddlers until they are placed with their new families.
Pack a few of the items each one needs, hand them to our team when you arrive, and we will deliver them.
How we believe birding travel should work
We live here. Our team has planned trips from San José since 2004, and the forests our birders come to see are the same ones our own families walk on a Sunday. That changes how we plan a trip.
- Small, and close to the birds. Many of the lodges we use are small, and several are family run, like Trogon Lodge, a family farm on the Savegre river in San Gerardo de Dota. Your stay pays the people who look after the forest you walk in.
- Costa Rican from start to finish. Your trip pays lodges, drivers and guides here in Costa Rica, and our own team in San José, who look after you from the day you land.
- The bird comes first. We ask our birders to keep their distance from nests and roosts, to go easy with playback, and to stay on the trails. No photo is worth a bird leaving its nest.
- Giving back, starting now. A portion of what every birding trip earns goes directly to the partners on this page and the birds they protect. They are our first step, and we want this page to keep growing.
What comes next
This is a start. We hope to bring our birders to see the Great Green Macaw work in person, and to share our partners' stories here as they unfold.
If you work on bird conservation in Costa Rica and would like to talk, we would love to hear from you.