Fundraiser for 2023
Keep the Batumi Raptor Count flying high with your support
For thirteen years the BRC has conducted high quality raptor migration counts. This long-term monitoring is critical to understand how bird populations are doing in our rapidly changing world. However, structural funding for monitoring schemes such as ours is very hard, if not impossible, to find. Over the years we’ve been able to run our counts thanks to the support from loyal sponsors like OSME and Swarovski Optik, T-shirt sales, donations from ecotourism operators and members of the public, and last but not least: thousands of hours of unpaid work by over 400 volunteers from dozens of countries. This has enabled us to do monitoring work of extraordinary quality, delivering unique data to detect trends in the abundance, demography and migration timing of otherwise poorly known raptor populations. Furthermore, we’ve always tried to be as open and transparent as possible by having open data sharing procedures. This sets us apart from many bird observatories worldwide.
Last year, for the first time in BRC history, we started a big crowdfunding campaign to raise the budget needed to run this year’s count. The response from the birdwatching community to our campaign was immense and its success exceeded all of our expectations! We are very grateful to all of you who decided to support us. Thanks to your generosity, we already have a decent budget of at least 6000 EUR in our wallet for the autumn count of 2023. Nonetheless, this is not enough to run another full season count. For this reason we are picking up crowdfunding again.
Help us raise funds for the 2023 count
Securing the count comes with the same deal as before: we need 20.000 EUR to run our 2023 autumn count. Our aim is to raise this amount before the end of October when the current autumn count finishes. Given our large international base of supporters and followers, the many visitors we hope to see in Batumi this autumn, and the generosity of the birdwatching and nature conservation community, we believe it should be possible!
On the crowdfunding page you can find more details on how your money will be put to use. To already give some examples: on average, 200 EUR funds one day of counting. With 130 EUR you fund a one-week participation of a young Georgian conservationist. So what are you waiting for? Please, help us circulate this message widely by sharing this message with all your friends and family! The sooner we get our budgets together, the better our team can focus on organising next year’s count. Instead of spending days behind our computer wasting time competing with other conservation groups for small grants, we can put all our efforts in producing important research and organising valuable education and conservation work in parallel to the counts. Your donation makes a massive difference to us, and you know we’ll use it wisely!