Miguel Angel Cruz-Neito’s PIF Award
Carol Beidleman (Partners in Flight Awards Committee Chair), Sarahy Contreras Martínez (Universidad de Guadalajara-CUCSUR, Partners in Flight Steering Committee), Edwin Juarez (Arizona Game and Fish Department, Partners in Flight Western Working Group), and Mike Green (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Partners in Flight Steering Committee)
Through the Partners in Flight (PIF) Awards, PIF has been recognizing outstanding individuals and groups across the Americas for their exceptional contributions to the field of landbird conservation since 1996. We were pleased to have five 2023 PIF Award winners, including from Puerto Rico and Mexico. Several of these awardees were recognized in front of their peers in the spring of 2024, at the North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference in Michigan and a Gulf Coast Joint Venture Management Board Meeting in Louisiana. The BirdsCaribbean 24th International Conference in July 2024, which was held in the Dominican Republic, provided a great opportunity to present another award. However, there was still one more 2023 PIF Award ceremony surprise in store!
A vital aspect of the PIF Awards is making them accessible to nominees across the Western Hemisphere. Once award winners are selected, the challenge is often how to get the physical awards to our esteemed colleagues in Latin America or the Caribbean. We’re always on the lookout for couriers who can hand-carry an award to the recipient in their home country or elsewhere, usually at PIF-related meetings.
CECAM, Oaxaca
The XXI Congreso para el Estudio y Conservación de las Aves en México (XXI CECAM), which was held in late September in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, México, provided such an opportunity. This annual conference is hosted by the Sociedad para el Estudio y Conservación de las Aves en México A.C. (CIPAMEX), a non-profit civil association whose main objective is the study and conservation of Mexican birds and their habitats. There were 185 participants, including many students and early career professionals. The PIF Western Working Group (WWG) had participated in a previous CECAM meeting in 2011 in Mazatlán.
Edwin Juarez and Sarahy Contreras Martínez, through PIF WWG’s Conservation Without Borders, a multi-national forum for the full-lifecycle conservation of migratory birds, worked with PIF and CIPAMEX leadership to organize a PIF Award ceremony in Oaxaca. This was included as part of a PIF keynote address and symposium and a roundtable discussion (led by Esmeralda Bravo Hernández of Road to Recovery), all given in Spanish by PIF participants from the U.S., Canada, and México.
Miguel Angel Cruz-Nieto with Golden Eagle
Miguel Angel Cruz-Nieto, from Monterrey, México, had been selected to receive the first posthumous PIF Award, an Individual 2023 Partners in Flight David N. Pashley Lifetime Achievement Award for his life-long community-based wildlife and bird conservation, habitat conservation and restoration, and work with endangered and flagship species. His untimely death in September 2023 ended a fruitful career in conservation, particularly bird conservation, in México. He served as Director of Conservation with Pronatura Noreste and Noroeste, where he was responsible for the Ecoregional Conservation Programs of the Chihuahuan Desert and Sierra Madre Occidental, and conducted technical studies and developed management plans for over 10 protected natural areas. Miguel had extensive experience designing projects related to endangered and charismatic bird species such as Worthen’s Sparrow, Thick-billed Parrot, and Golden Eagle. He achieved innovations in land protection, acquiring grazing, water, and logging rights, creating private reserves, and payments for environmental services. Miguel’s legacy will persist through the many projects, organizations, and people who he touched and with whom he collaborated. “Yes you can,” he would always say.
Mike Green presented this posthumous PIF award in Oaxaca to Miguel’s wife, Nereyda Maldonado, and his daughters Nereyda Cruz Maldonado, Azelea Cruz Maldonado, and Angela Cruz Maldonado. “Our family is infinitely grateful for this recognition Partners in Flight is offering for our father, grandfather and husband,” said Nereyda Cruz Maldonado. “It certainly would have been a great pleasure for him to have received it during his lifetime wholly devoted to family and conservation. As many of you surely know he had no time or interest to seek recognition.”
Left to right: Mike Green, Partners in Flight Steering Committee U.S. Co-Chair; Angela Cruz Maldonado (daughter); Nereyda Maldonado (wife) with PIF Award; Azelea Cruz Maldonado (daughter); Nereyda Cruz Maldonado (daughter), at PIF Award presentation, XXI CECAM, Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, México, September 27, 2024.
The award ceremony followed a keynote address, with an introduction from the CIPAMEX President Javier Salgado Ortiz, by Mike Green, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, “Compañeros en Vuelo: Conservación de las Aves en las Américas (Partners in Flight: Bird Conservation in the Americas).” The previous day, the symposium, “Conservation Without Borders: Sharing knowledge and collaborative multinational efforts for multispecies ecosystem conservation,” included a dozen presentations on strengthening international collaborations to conserve resident and migratory birds through partnerships (e.g., PIF, cross-border collaborations, tools for conservation, and funding mechanisms). This was followed by a 90-minute roundtable discussion for students and early career professionals, “Building a career in bird research and conservation: Experiences, challenges, and potential international opportunities,” with four panelists, each representing different career stages and experiences in international collaborations and networking, who shared their insights and challenges that have shaped their careers. A display table offered PIF information, including the new “What is PIF?” brochure in Spanish and a special t-shirt made for CECAM. The Facebook video of the PIF Keynote and PIF Award presentation can be watched at https://fb.watch/wBBGHyH_Pq/ and the PIF Symposium can be watched at Part 1: https://fb.watch/wBBK_BaHz3/ and Part 2: https://fb.watch/wBBMNI8-vh/.
Reflecting at the close of the symposium, John Alexander, attending on behalf of Klamath Bird Observatory and the PIF Steering Committee, said “What we want to do together with birds will benefit all people…If we can demonstrate with science, at the site where each of us works, the benefit from many small actions, we can make a new age where all populations benefit.”
We were pleased to be able to present this posthumous PIF award for Miguel Angel Cruz-Nieto to his family at CECAM, and are grateful to Sarahy Contreras Martínez, Edwin Juarez, Mike Green, and CIPAMEX President Javier Salgado Ortiz for making this memorable celebration and PIF symposium possible.
Please visit the Partners in Flight website (https://partnersinflight.org/2023-partners-in-flight-awards/) to read about the important contributions to landbird conservation made by the other 2023 awardees, with gratitude to the U.S. Forest Service for its ongoing sponsorship of the PIF Awards.