International Development of Ornithology (INDO)

Help us with the International Development of Ornithology (INDO) Project.

Part of your annual fee will help to fund free membership bursaries for those people from countries where US$10/£5 a year is a lot of money. Generally, these will be countries not served by our preferred payment provider, PayPal. For a summary of the rationale behind this please click here.

The GDP per capita (Gross National Product per person - a measure of country wealth and personal earnings) of the USA is US$41,600 and the UK is US$30,100. Malaysia and South Africa are around US$12,000, India is US$3,400 and Nepal is US$1,400. Yemen, East Timor, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Zambia and Ethiopia, and many others, are only US$600-900 per annum.1 In these countries, US$10 per year is invariably greater than a week’s family wages.

We hope that you agree that our site’s resources should be available to everyone, perhaps particularly so if they are from the Third World Countries, as a means of developing ornithology in those areas and promoting good conservation and environmental stewardship.

In addition, when it becomes financially viable, we will be sponsoring ornithological research and educational projects, particularly in Developing Countries. The research will concentrate mainly, but not exclusively, on the relationship between habitat conservation (or destruction), climatic changes and population dynamics in important wintering, migration or breeding areas. The educational projects will involve introducing primary and secondary school children to ornithology in these important regions.

1 World Factbook 2006