British Birdwatching Fair

Record Funds for Cuban Wilderness Project - £135,000 raised

2002 FAIR TO HELP SAVE SUMATRA'S LAST LOWLAND RAINFORESTS

The British Birdwatching Fair (BBWF) presented BirdLife International with a cheque for a record £135,000 from last year's Fair for BirdLife International's Eastern Cuba: Saving a Unique Caribbean Wilderness project. The Fair's organisers also announced that this year they will raise funds to help BirdLife protect the last lowland rainforests of Sumatra in Indonesia, one of the world's potential global extinction "hotspots".

Accepting the cheque for BirdLife International, Director & Chief Executive Dr Michael Rands said, "This money is vital for the BirdLife Partnership to help protect the largest remaining wilderness area in the Caribbean. BirdLife International greatly thanks the British Birdwatching Fair and the thousands of people who visited last year's Fair and gave so generously".

The funds raised will be used to improve the existing protected areas network in eastern Cuba and secure their long-term conservation, and help catalyse national and regional Important Bird Area (IBA) programmes as previous BBWF-funded projects have in Brazil and Vietnam. A bird mural painted by leading UK wildlife artists at last year's Fair has since been put on permanent display at the National Museum in Havana, Cuba.

The BBWF organisers also announced the 2002 Fair will raise funds for a new project entitled "Saving the Last Lowland Rainforests in Sumatra".

"Indonesia has the highest number of threatened species (117) in the world. Nowhere is the crisis facing Indonesia's birds and forests more severe than on the island of Sumatra, where a shocking 78 of 102 local lowland forest dependent bird species are listed as globally threatened or near threatened", said Fair co-organiser Martin Davies.

These rainforests face an unprecedented threat to their existence from logging and clearance for agriculture and exotic plantations. Not only do they support dozens of globally threatened and near threatened bird species, including Red-naped Trogonand Rhinoceros Hornbill, but also the world's last remaining critically endangered Sumatran Orang Utans, Sumatran Tigers, and Sumatran Rhinoceroses.

According to the World Bank all of Sumatra's remaining lowland rainforests will disappear by 2005 if current rates of logging continue. If these rainforests are lost, with them would be lost birds such as the critically endangered Sumatran Ground-cuckoo, mammals such as the critically endangered Sumatran Orang Utan, Sumatran Tiger and Sumatran Rhinoceros, the Raja Brooke's birdwing butterfly and the world's largest flower, the Rafflesia.