The Central Park to Central America Initiative unites the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s world-leading science with the Wildlife Conservation Society’s unmatched field capacity and government partnerships to protect and restore Mesoamerica’s Five Great Forests.
These last large tropical forests in the region are critical to the survival of many beloved species - like the Wood Thrush, Golden-winged Warbler, and Broad-winged Hawk - that connect backyard birders in the U.S. and Canada to communities and forests thousands of miles away.
These five forests support between one-tenth and nearly one-half of the global populations of 40 migratory bird species, including some of North America’s most rapidly declining birds. More than one-third of the world’s Kentucky Warblers and nearly one-quarter of all Wood Thrushes and Golden-winged Warblers spend the winter within these forests.
The Five Great Forests are vanishing rapidly. Deforestation, fueled largely by illegal cattle ranching, has already consumed millions of acres.
The Cornell Lab’s science has enabled us to map “sister landscapes” to the Five Great Forests in North America - the places where the migratory species that need Central America’s forests concentrate during spring and summer. These eastern forests, from Appalachia to the Great Lakes to New England, would fall silent if Central America’s great forests were lost.
Together, we can protect what remains and bring back what’s been lost. By 2030, we will:
Secure an area of intact forest the size of Kentucky (10 million hectares)
Restore a Delaware-sized area (500,000 hectares) of degraded and cleared forest habitat
Eliminate destructive illegal cattle ranching from the Five Great Forests.
Safeguard key migration stopovers and core wintering habitat for 40+ bird species like Wood Thrush and Golden-winged Warbler
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s cutting-edge avian science in partnership with WCS’s unmatched on-the-ground presence enables strategic and targeted conservation that delivers measurable impact where it matters most.
For the first time, we hold a powerful combination: the ability to pinpoint the most critical places for hundreds of migratory bird species – week by week, across the entire year – and the infrastructure to protect them at the speed and scale this crisis demands.
Birders around the world have contributed more than two billion observations to the Cornell Lab’s eBird platform, powering data analyses showing where, when, and how many birds are using habitats across the landscape. The Cornell Lab’s models can zoom down to areas roughly the size of Central Park — small enough to guide protection efforts to specific valleys, ridges, or forest groves that matter most for declining species.
A teacher in Honduras logging a warbler sighting connects directly to abundance models that guide habitat protection from Canada to Costa Rica. People living in the Five Great Forests are contributing data on birds in their own communities, feeding into continental-scale conservation decisions.
The Cornell Lab’s science can identify where bird communities should be thriving based on habitat quality — but aren’t. This reveals hidden threats like pesticide use, hunting pressure, or climate impacts before populations collapse, enabling further investigation and rapid intervention.
WCS is the only conservation organization with feet in the field across all Five Great Forests, and deep relationships built over decades.
90% local workforce and partnerships with Indigenous Peoples, and local communities who steward these landscapes.
From village councils to national ministries, WCS partners to influence the decisions that determine forest futures.
Science-based approaches tested across the most challenging conservation contexts on Earth.
Watch the video to learn more about the Five Great Forests, the migratory species they sustain, and the local stewards leading the fight to keep them standing so that we can all keep welcoming our birds back year after year.
Learn more about the work related to migratory birds and the conservation and restoration of the ecosystems
More information: Anna Lello-Smith, Avian Conservation Coordinator for WCS Mesoamerica & Western Caribbean / alellosmith@wcs.org