About
The conservation of our natural world cannot be brought about by individuals or countries acting in isolation. It can only be achieved through our understanding of each other; our cultural, social, and economic differences, across countries and continents as far flung and widespread as the osprey itself.
—Gill Lewis, author of Wild Wings
Our Mission
Amigos Alados is an international environmental education and friendship project offering instruction on endemic and migratory bird life for elementary students in the United States, Mexico, and Canada. We have four primary objectives:
Our Vision
The Amigos Alados vision is to involve an increasing number of schools in the United States, Mexico, and Canada so that we create a widespread conviction that migratory birds and their ecosystems can be saved by education and collaborative effort. We hope to inspire our children to seek higher education in the environmental sciences and to continue working to sensitize their larger communities to today’s pressing environmental issues of habitat loss, toxic contamination, global warming, and rapid extinction of species so that together we can find solutions to these problems.
Project Background
Amigos Alados or Winged Friends is an exciting educational project between elementary and middle school students in the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Beginning in the fall of 2007, students at Ross School in Marin County, California, and Primaria Cuauhtemoc in Los Espinos, Jalisco, began studying birds that migrate between the San Francisco Bay Area and the Sierra de Tapalpa and sharing their research and observations with each other.
We know that it is essential that conservation work be done across borders especially when it comes to protecting migratory birds, but also because we are all responsible for and experience the consequences of climate change and the pollution of the environment. This is our central motivation for creating the connection between students in the three countries. NABCI’s (North American Bird Conservation Initiative) 2025 State of the Birds report states that we have lost about one third of our birds, and their decline continues. Many migratory birds fly great distances only to meet their end due to destruction of their stopover spots or final destinations. Widespread habitat destruction, fires, floods, drought, pesticide use, house cats, window collisions, and other factors endanger our birds and other wildlife. Without overwhelming our students, we aim to foster a sense of wonder and of responsibility so that they are more likely to become active stewards of the environment
Besides helping to educate our students about birds and their habitats, Amigos Alados offers an opportunity for a friendship and penpal program between the schools. This project is an important way to bring children who live on the same migratory flyway together and to enrich their appreciation of the longstanding, close relationship between the environments and cultures of North America.
Restoring bird habitat.
Teacher and student identify a bird.