Critical mass: the creation of Pajarero/Birder communities in Mexico for citizen science

ABSTRACT

Birding (pajareo) precedes the field of citizen science by decades, if not centuries. However, by being incorporated into institutional programs and digital platforms [Invernizzi, N. 2020. “Public Participation and Democratization: Effects on the Production and Consumption of Science and Technology.” Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society 3 (1): 227–253. https://do.org/10.1080/25729861.2020.1835225], birding has been inscribed into the logic of data-intensive science [Scroggins, M. J., and I. V. Pasquetto. 2020. “Labor Out of Place: On the Varieties and Valences of (In)Visible Labor in Data-Intensive Science.” Engaging Science, Technology, and Society 6:111–132. https://do.org/10.17351/ests2020.341], with the premise of increasing the number of volunteers to accumulate more and more data. The history of these practices in Mexico is very recent, dating back only about 15 years. The explosion in the number of practitioners since then has been largely the product of institutional arrangements and top-down initiatives carried out by Mexican government environmental agencies. Building on recent STS approaches to public participation that conceive citizen science as a situated and contextual phenomenon, I propose that public policies can be legitimately used to create publics. From the study of interviews, visual materials, participant observation in birding field trips, and other ethnographic materials, I recover the different stories that have led to the creation of brigades, groups, and observation clubs in Mexico. I argue that this approach allows us to go beyond normative positions and present a much more complex reality than the mere instrumental relationship between institutions and communities.

RESUMO

O pajareo (observação de aves) precede o campo da ciência cidadã em décadas, se não em séculos; no entanto, ao ser incorporado a programas institucionais e plataformas digitais [Invernizzi, N. 2020. “Public Participation and Democratization: Effects on the Production and Consumption of Science and Technology.” Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society 3 (1): 227–253. https://do.org/10.1080/25729861.2020.1835225], o pajareo se tornou parte da lógica da ciência intensiva em dados [Scroggins, M. J., and I. V. Pasquetto. 2020. “Labor Out of Place: On the Varieties and Valences of (In)Visible Labor in Data-Intensive Science.” Engaging Science, Technology, and Society 6:111–132. https://do.org/10.17351/ests2020.341], com a premissa de aumentar o número de voluntários para acumular cada vez mais dados. A história dessas práticas no México, entretanto, é muito curta, datando de apenas 15 anos. A explosão do número de praticantes desde então foi, em grande parte, produto de arranjos institucionais e iniciativas de cima para baixo realizadas por órgãos ambientais do governo mexicano. Com base nas recentes abordagens da CTS - Ciência, Tecnologia e Sociedade sobre a participação pública, que a concebem como um fenômeno situado e contextual, proponho explorar as maneiras pelas quais a política pública pode ser legitimamente usada para criar públicos. Ao estudar entrevistas, materiais visuais, observação participante em pajareadas e outros materiais etnográficos, recupero as diferentes histórias que levaram à criação de brigadas, grupos e clubes de observação no México. Minha proposta é que essa abordagem nos permite ir além das posições normativas e apresentar uma realidade muito mais complexa do que a mera relação instrumental entre instituições e comunidades.

RESUMEN

El pajareo precede en décadas, si no es que en siglos, al campo de la ciencia ciudadana, sin embargo, al ser incorporado a programas institucionales y plataformas digitales [Invernizzi, N. 2020. “Public Participation and Democratization: Effects on the Production and Consumption of Science and Technology.” Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society 3 (1): 227–253. https://do.org/10.1080/25729861.2020.1835225], el pajareo se ha inscrito en la lógica de la ciencia data-intensive [Scroggins, M. J., and I. V. Pasquetto. 2020. “Labor Out of Place: On the Varieties and Valences of (In)Visible Labor in Data-Intensive Science.” Engaging Science, Technology, and Society 6:111–132. https://do.org/10.17351/ests2020.341], con la premisa de incrementar el número de voluntarios de manera constante con el fin de acumular cada vez más datos. La historia de estas prácticas en México, sin embargo, es muy reciente, remontándose a apenas unos 15 años. La explosión que se ha experimentado desde entonces en el número de practicantes, ha sido en gran parte producto de arreglos institucionales e iniciativas top-down llevadas a cabo por agencias medioambientales del gobierno mexicano. A partir de enfoques recientes de los ECT sobre participación pública que la conciben como un fenómeno situado y contextual, propongo explorar las maneras en las que las políticas públicas pueden ser usadas de manera legítima para crear o movilizar públicos. A partir del estudio de entrevistas, materiales visuales, observación participante en pajareadas y otros materiales etnográficos, recupero las diferentes historias que han llevado a la creación de brigadas, grupos, y clubes de observación en México. Mi propuesta es que este enfoque nos permite ir más allá de las posiciones normativas y presentar una realidad mucho más compleja que la mera relación instrumental entre instituciones y comunidades.

KEYWORDS:

• Citizen science
• community-based monitoring
• birding
• creation of the public

PALAVRAS-CHAVE:

• Ciência cidadã
• monitorização baseada na comunidade
• observação de aves
• criação de públicos

PALABRAS CLAVE:

• Ciencia ciudadana
• monitoreo comunitario
• observación de aves
• creación de públicos

1. Introduction: a tale of two countries

Birding is an age-old Anglo-Saxon hobby that consists in locating, identifying, and counting birds in their natural habitats, then recording these observations in lists.¹ Traditionally an analog activity carried out using field guides, pen, and notebook, the introduction of eBird in 2002 to the United States (Sullivan et al. 2009, 2014), an online citizen science platform intended for birders to digitize their lists, altered birding in very distinctive ways as it inscribed this hobby into the philosophical, methodological, and ethical premises of citizen science in its digitized shape (Elliott and Rosenberg 2019).² This programmatic imaginary is related to what is known as data-intensive science (Scroggins and Pasquetto 2020), which is oriented to gather information on a massive and global scale by relying on internet connectivity, digitalization of information, and accessibility of electronic tools. Although eBird was initially intended for expert birders, people with enough skills to locate and identify species without assistance, it has been progressively linked with a set of functionalities and complementary Apps that facilitate the identification of species by description, photo, or audio, and can also help to locate species in different times and places while providing filters and safeguards for the less proficient practitioners. These features serve the double function of quality assurance and easing the craft, essentially replacing – or at least compensating – human skills, thus allowing citizen science program managers to recruit more users from diverse backgrounds and uneven levels of expertise, with the resulting increase in the number of volunteers and standardization of the data they produce.

Unlike its already established American counterpart, Mexican birding is very young. The official register counts more than 300 birders and birding clubs participating in its networks (Calderón Parra et al., 2018), but eBird registers more than 17,000 users operating in the country (NABCI 2022). This number may not seem very large compared with the millions of birders in the United States (ABA 2022; STATISTA 2022). However, the number of Mexican people and organizations involved in these activities is remarkable if we consider that this form of knowledge, study, and collection of birds that is very particular to the Global North was introduced in the country only at the beginning of the millennium. Birding in the American style didn't take off until the 2000s, aside from some previously isolated enterprises (Cerón 2018; Gómez de Silva and Alvarado Reyes 2010; Navarro and Benítez 1995). Furthermore, where American birding started with bottom-up spontaneous initiatives (Obmascik 2008), Mexican pajarero communities are the brainchild of a governmental agency, and were created because of international treaties and trade agreements. Several programs were implemented to mobilize publics to practice birding by the means of convincing, recruiting, and training members of diverse communities. The adaptation and introduction of a local Spanish-language version of eBird in 2004 was another landmark in these developments (Gómez de Silva and Alvarado Reyes 2010).

In this article, I describe how birding communities in Mexico emerged through the actions of the Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad (CONABIO) and the Iniciativa para la Conservación de las Aves de América del Norte (NABCI).³ This type of top-down citizen science has often been critiqued by STS-scholars who value citizens’ concerns and interests over those of professional scientists and authorities (Irwin 2015, Kuchinskaya 2019).⁴ However, I argue that we reconsider public policies and institutional agendas as legitimate ways to mobilize publics, avoiding a reductionism that would consider the result of these strategies a mere instrumental use of the communities by the institutions. Most importantly, in the case of Mexican pajareo, situating birding brigades and clubs in the context in which they have been created and operationalized allows for a comprehensive understanding of how the production of scientific information generated by volunteers is locally taking place.

My specific objective is to offer a closer look at the organizational infrastructure that CONABIO and NABCI have created around birding and its publics. During one of the interviews I conducted, one CONABIO official referred to this act of luring communities to join citizen science programs with the uncomfortable metaphor of “inoculation,” which in its literal sense means introducing foreign infective cells or organisms into a culture medium or animal. In this case, the word inoculation was meant to refer to the strategies by which the Commission has targeted specific demographic sectors, ranging from college students and urban middle classes to rural and indigenous communities, government institutions, and NGOs, to create a wide, diverse, continually growing and sufficiently skilled network of people to feed the citizen science databases with large credible information about birds. As tempting as it may be to use this metaphor, I prefer another term that is widely used and has been appropriated by the pajareros themselves, and that perhaps describes this process even better: critical mass.

2. Methodological note

I have been involved with local pajarero communities since 2016, both as a researcher and as an enthusiast of bird photography. During this time, I have compiled about sixty hours of video, twenty hours of semi-structured interviews on audio, plus casual conversations and WhatsApp message exchanges. I have analyzed documents, official reports, and other visual and verbal texts about birding in Mexico. For this paper, I recover some of the stories that have led to the creation of observation clubs in Mexico during the last fifteen years. My premise is that ethnographic experiences, that is, being in the field, sharing birding trips and talking to other enthusiasts are invaluable resources to nuance any predetermined and normative notions about the participation of amateurs in science and technology activities.

To recreate this tale, I have interwoven the interview and documental data into the narrative by synthesizing and compressing the information and testimonies but clarifying the source and nature of my data. The main protagonists of this narrative are birders that are also NABCI and Cornell officials, as well as participants and leaders of other clubs that integrate the networks these agencies have created. Following the standard ethical practices for this type of papers, I have fully anonymized them by changing their names. Based on the accounts of these participants, I have synthesized the creation of Mexican pajarero communities into an integrative case story that sketches its origins, contexts, and internal politics.

3. Situated birding

In September 2019, I was standing in the rain, enduring the cold night in Jilotepec, Estado de México. It was the inaugural event of the Annual Meeting of the PAU, a four-day gathering that included round tables, workshops, conferences, exhibits, and sighting tours to nearby hotspots. I was invited to attend by Morales and Norma, two top NABCI officials.⁵ There were more than 120 birders, including myself, from all around the country in attendance, plus a few others from the United States, Argentina, Taiwan, and Venezuela. El Chino, an avitourism guide from San Pancho, Nayarit, pointed to the huge congregation as he told me that 10 or 15 years back, all this was unimaginable: “And the objective is to reach a critical mass in five or ten more years.”⁶

The term “critical mass” was originally coined in nuclear physics to refer to the minimum amount of material needed to create a sustained nuclear chain reaction. As a metaphor, social sciences and popular culture have appropriated the term and applied it to social movements in which a sufficiently large group of organized people affect a significant change, for example, in activism and mass demonstrations (Oliver 2022). The notion of critical mass has become an important part of the imaginary of the pajarero communities, with the imperative that the number of observers in our country must continue to grow. Morales (interview) too had used the same term to name the expected outcome of the initiatives he and his team have been implementing.⁷

But how exactly can the publics be sparked to create a critical mass effect? Noortje Marres (2005, 216) argues that “Issues call a public into being, and public involvement in politics stands in the service of these issues.” Regardless of the complexity of the problem, publics emerge when a situation overwhelms the institutions responsible for dealing with it. Environmental disasters created by climate change or by pollution come to mind as examples, as well as the need to generate enough information to deal with these disasters; other issues, such as measuring the agricultural productivity of ejidos⁸ from massive regions, or the lack of needed information about urban fauna, also pertain to the local birders in Mexico. What makes these assemblages of people from the Global South so distinctive from their birding counterparts in the North is the fact that these citizen science communities did not emerge in response to a situation, but were, so to speak, invited to emerge by the institutions themselves. Therein lies the complexity of the institutional framework that contextualizes its sparking and the heterogeneity of the demographic composition of the communities. The next sections will expand on the latter issue; I will now focus on the institutional arrangements of birding.

As a parallel and complementary measure to the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, Canada, the United States, and Mexico agreed to launch the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), an intergovernmental body through which the three countries sought to implement activities for the conservation, protection, and improvement of the environment, including citizen participation. Five years later, during a meeting of its Council, the North American Bird Conservation Initiative (NABCI) was approved, a forum focused on restoring and improving the populations and habitats of the subcontinent's birds through initiatives coordinated at the international, national, regional, and local levels with governments, academic groups, and the public (CONABIO 2022a). In Mexico, the local chapter of the NABCI was allocated to the CONABIO, an inter-secretarial agency created during the neoliberal government of Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988–1994) to address the environmental crisis that had been looming over the country since the second half of the twentieth century (CONABIO 2012; Simonian 1999). Among others, the Commission has the function of generating and compiling information on biodiversity while being the public source of such information. To this end, the CONABIO has established the Sistema Nacional de Información sobre Biodiversidad (SNIB),⁹ a series of databases articulated and fed through different sources of information, like records from museum specimens, scientific collections, educational institutions, and citizen science platforms such as eBird and Naturalista (CONABIO 2008). Through the NABCI, the Mexican government has promoted birding in several regions of the country and the agency has been instrumental in organizing and leading the different and diverse clubs, communities, and groups that have taken to observing birds in the territory.

Supporters of citizen panels and other participatory activities, like citizen science, many of which operate outside of the governing and scientific institutions, sometimes become suspicious of the involvement of “the establishment,” especially if governmental and scientific institutions act to convene the participatory publics.¹⁰ In this regard, David H. Guston (2015) has defended the notion that public policies can be used as legitimate strategies to create communities and publics. A less binary assessment of the imbrication of publics and institutions might evaluate whether the methods for building publics were well designed, whether the ramifications of these actions have been considered, and whether these publics are being treated with respect. Additionally, we might add the necessity of understanding what benefits, if any, participants gain by their involvement (Land-Zandstra, Agnello, and Selman Gültekin 2021).¹¹

This articulation of birding practices in the country is akin to the establishment of an epistemic culture in the sense of Karin Knorr-Cetina (2007; 2009): “those sets of practices, arrangements and mechanisms bound together by necessity, affinity and historical coincidence which, in a given area of professional expertise, make up how we know what we know” (2007, 363). Although no specific number of recruits makes up a critical mass, achieving significant change involves other elements of the epistemic culture and not just enough people; in the case of birding, an important element is digital interconnected technologies. According to Knorr-Cetina, policies are also a key element of the arrangements and mechanisms that contribute to creating an epistemic culture: policies matter because they encourage or discourage certain epistemic outcomes, certain “knowledge oriented lifeworlds” (2007, 364).

There is also a techno-material side to critical mass and epistemic cultures that the Mexican case serves to illustrate, based on the adaptation and introduction of birding technologies and Apps. The Mexican chapter of NABCI has established cooperative agreements with institutions like the Ornithology Lab of Cornell to work on mutual interests. This is how the notion of developing a Spanish version of eBird first came to be. The platform was originally designed by Cornell and the Audubon Society with a double objective: as a tool for American birdwatchers to organize and manage their lists of sightings by digitizing them and providing easy access in one unified repository, while bringing all this information together to build a big global database of bird occurrences. Morales and the NABCI’s officials convinced Cornell to make a Mexican version of the platform that was adequate for the local public and context:

What you’re doing in the US and Canada is pretty cool, could we adapt that for Mexico? But there are some things we need to do: the name eBird doesn't work, let's come up with a Mexican name, aVerAves seems to make a lot of sense. (Duke, high official from Cornell Ornithology Lab’s eBird, interview)¹²

This transculturation involved heavy background work, as it was not just necessary to adapt the language, but also a series of functions that required local input as well.¹³ This meant incorporating data on the possible local occurrences of species in certain Mexican areas in certain times of the year and including the common names for birds that can be spotted in the country. Since this information varies from region to region, a group of specialists from different parts of Mexico had to work together to compile and review all the data before it was added to the platform. The result was the first local adaptation of eBird in the world, which eventually served as a base for the subsequent Spanish regional portals developed for other countries in Latin America and managed by local partners; in Mexico the government took the lead.

Previously, there wasn't a community of birders, just some scientists that were studying birds but there wasn't a community of birdwatchers. But you know the Mexican government has been really involved in the development of eBird. (Duke, interview)

To achieve the goal of bringing birding activities to Mexico, and fostering the usage of the citizen science portal, the NABCI first reached the academic sector where they were met with a huge distrust of the platform and contempt from amateur observers (Morales, interview). Still, they started working with those who were already there: students and some scattered amateur naturalists. They set themselves the task of identifying the scarce birding clubs that already existed in Mexico. Using Facebook and other similar channels they started asking “Who knows about birding clubs in Mexico?” Over time, they found one in San Luis Potosí, another in Tijuana, and a couple in Mérida and Campeche. Some of the members volunteered to help in compiling information: who the contacts were, their e-mail addresses, and web page when there was one. “And we started with six or seven and now there are more than a hundred” (Morales, interview).

Pajareo is a situated activity, and participation is enacted and contextualized (Haklay 2013), not predetermined. The recruiting programs, the infrastructure, the tools, the guides, the site-specific working networks, they all play their part in stimulating the critical mass. The role of pajareros is not as mere instruments of the institutions. Birding in Mexico is also not a case of passive adoption of foreign cultural traits and practices. It is rather an instance of a situated public engagement with science.¹⁴ The context, interests, and expertise of local populations, as well as the technological and socio-economic conditions have given a particular shape to local birders and their communities. The demographic composition of those who engage in these practices also differs from birders of the Global North. There, birding is mainly characterized, though not exclusively, by competition to increase wealthy individuals’ lists of observations (Obmascik 2008). Here, pajareros and pajareras are mostly biology or veterinary students, environmental educators, active university professors, government officials, tourist guides, and farmers; mostly people with limited time and purchasing power and, for the most part, an intense aptitude for activism, environmental conservation, and informal scientific education. Understanding the dynamics of participation, the spaces of negotiation in the networks of pajareros, and the political spaces through which these collectives’ practices acquire legitimacy can help enhance our understanding of the political and cultural dynamics of citizen science, especially in the Global South.

4. Birding in the Global South

The next stage in this public-creating scheme came through more wide-scale institutional arrangements, with a very different demographic target, such as ejidatarios and indigenous people, and with deeper economic implications. In 2009, the NABCI joined the Manejo Integrado de Ecosistemas program (MIE)¹⁵ to create a series of community monitoring programs focused on birds as a tool for biodiversity conservation. The MIE was funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and originally implemented by the Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas (CONANP),¹⁶ and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in the Mexican states of Veracruz, Guerrero, and Oaxaca. The objective of the MIE was to halt the loss of biodiversity by introducing sustainable productive activities in strategic regions; for example, shade-grown coffee production, honey production, agroforestry, livestock farming, alternative farming, aquaculture, and ecotourism (CONABIO 2020; Ortega-Álvarez et al. 2012a). NABCI's role consisted in implementing a community monitoring program that used local and migratory birds as bioindicators, that is, they were used to evaluate the impact of these productive activities on the ecosystems.¹⁷ The need for institutions to incorporate people without scientific preparation to these kinds of activities is often motivated by economic restrictions and the lack of sufficient academic paid positions available to generate the amount of information needed for data-intensive science: “The work is incessant and the personnel assigned to these tasks, insufficient” (Sánchez González and Ortega-Álvarez 2015, 15).

In the Tuxtlas Reserve (Veracruz), NABCI recruited volunteers from 10 local communities, from the Nahua, Popoluca, and Mestizo populations, to train them in bird monitoring, an initiative that soon led to the creation of a regional group (Huilotl Toxtlan), which expanded to 26 communities and recruited 56 members with both ejido and private property ties (Santos Martínez, Málaga Temich, and Lozada Ronquillo 2015). In La Chinantla (Oaxaca), members of the Red de Jóvenes Reporteros Comunitarios from the Chinanteco indigenous peoples were recruited to write environmental stories and carry out monitoring. In its first stage, this organization was comprised of 22 pajareros and pajareras from 14 communities in the region (Noria Sánchez, Prisciliano Vázquez, and Patiño Islas 2015). When the MIE came to its end, community monitoring was adopted by another inter-sectoral program, the Corredor Biológico Mesoamericano México (CBM-M),¹⁸ funded by the GEF and the UNDP, and the Program also started to operate in other regions under the same principles (Carlos, interview).¹⁹ In the Tacaná Volcano Biosphere Reserve (Chiapas), NABCI together with the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) trained 10 ejidatarios from the transborder region between Mexico and Guatemala for the specific monitoring of the horned guan (Oreophasis derbianus), an endemic bird species identified as endangered, to estimate its population density and demographic trends (Rodríguez Acosta 2015). In the Lacandon Jungle, 14 members of the Chol ethnic group formed the Siyaj Chan (Cielo Nacido/Born Sky) Cooperative Society to provide ecotourism services and were soon also integrated into the Community Monitoring Program through training provided by CONANP, the Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (SEMARNAT), the Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas (CDI), the Secretaría de Turismo (SECTUR), the Universidad Intercultural de Chiapas (UNICH),²⁰ and the American Birding Association (ABA) for the identification and monitoring of avifauna (Álvarez Márquez, Nañez Jimenez, and López Gómez 2015). In the Yucatán Peninsula, at the Ria Lagartos Biosphere Reserve, staff from the Civil Associations Niños y Crías, Biocenosis, and Pronatura Península de Yucatán, and from the Reserve itself, together with groups of women from the local communities began monitoring the pink flamingo (Phoenicopterus ruber), which is considered the flagship species of the site and a bioindicator of the health of the wetlands that serve as its habitat. Part of these activities included the banding of baby birds, and the use of this technique provided evidence that supported the hypothesis that the populations of flamingos are not confined to local isolated communities in Mexico, the United States, or the Caribbean, as it was previously believed, but migrate across these regions (Robles de Benito 2015). Finally, the Program also operated in Milpa Alta, a semi-rural municipality of Mexico City, where NABCI has worked with local comuneros advising them on population counts of the Sierra Madre sparrow (Xenospiza Bailey), a microendemic species of Mexico considered endangered, as part of the surveillance and protection of the community reserve; this activity included a system of payment for environental services (Berlanga et al. 2015).

With time, the Community Monitoring Program grew more than it was originally expected, which led to the formal establishment of the Red de Monitoreo Comunitario (RCM) that gathers birders from rural areas from all around the country²¹: “People in many of the places took complete ownership of the project and were spearheading it in their communities to try to sensitize people within and outside of them” (Carlos, interview). According to CONABIO's records, the RMC has already integrated more than 40 groups throughout the country, which have recorded nearly 228,000 observations of more than 800 bird species (CONABIO 2022b). The process of building these groups proved to be full of tensions, negotiations, and interactions. For instance, the first attempts to recruit people from the communities were not successful:

When we started working on the MIE, we used to tell the communities, “Who do you want us to train? Give me ten people”. And they would send us an eighty-year-old lady or a twelve-year-old kid … Of course, the next time we went, only half of them showed up or the lady's granddaughter came in or … It was a mess … (Morales, interview)

To counteract this, the NABCI defined a profile of people it considered suitable for monitoring; these qualifications included appreciation for natural environments, physical fitness, previous community engagement, willingness to participate as a volunteer, and patience (Ortega-Álvarez et al. 2012b). In practice, one of the most efficient solutions has been taking advantage of the already established social structures, like recruiting rural teachers and other community leaders, or approaching the brigades that were already formed for other tasks, like people that were involved with other CONANP programs and were already known to be involved and reliable (Carlos, interview). If anything, this fact speaks about how top-down infrastructures can be used to engage participants in volunteered initiatives, including environmental activism, that were not intended by the original creators of those infrastructures.

Over time, the desertion rate lowered to under 10% (Morales, interview). Subsequently, the volunteers were trained in bird identification and equipment use through a series of workshops. Since all these cases pertained to low-income communities, part of the project budget was used to provide the monitors with basic tools for birding: field guides, notebooks, a manual for birding, and binoculars. Officially, this equipment is still owned by CONABIO and is given to the monitors in commodatum, although there is a tacit agreement that it will never return to NABCI. “The equipment has to be on the field because that's where it is useful” (Morales, interview).

Once one group was deemed ready, the first monitoring trips were conducted based on certain protocols such as fixed-radius point count.²² To this end, even though the eBird/aVerAves portal is not directly associated with the RCM, since it predated the monitoring program, one of the central requirements of this initiative was that all the information would be recorded in the portal to feed the database and make its information available to the scientific community for analysis (Carlos, interview). To add a higher level of credibility, the process of digitizing the data produced by the RMC involves a series of iterations. The first step is creating an account in eBird/aVerAves that will serve the whole monitoring group. Then, the Coordinator sends the registers to NABCI, where the officials review them as a double filter that ensures that the data to be entered is correct; this also allows NABCI to send feedback remotely to each group and to remain involved in their activities. However, the information generated by the monitors during their first months after joining the program is not analyzed or used, as it is considered part of the training protocol. Once the group passes this stage, their data are dutifully incorporated into the portal database.

Given the plurality of the monitoring groups, the RMC has rendered different results, both positive and adverse, depending on the biological, cultural, social, and economic conditions prevailing in the different regions where the programs are developed. Lack of money and time, lack of follow-up, misunderstanding and mistrust within the localities, disinterest on the part of local governments, and lack of continuity are some of the issues that have been reported (Sánchez González and Ortega-Álvarez 2015).

Both the MIE and the CBM-M ended their operations years ago,²³ so NABCI no longer has the financial means to keep providing equipment to the monitors. But other activities, like training, encounters, and partnerships remain, and the RMC is still operating on a national scale (CONABIO 2022b). Based on the return, the money spent (equipment, travels, etc.) versus the data produced, NABCI considers this a very profitable scheme: “This is as cheap as it gets and the quality and range and coverage and regularity [of the information] are inimitable, impossible” (Morales, interview).

5. City birds

After the RMC was formed, several city-based pajarero groups from Yucatán applied for membership. This is an area where birding has been particularly developed on account of the intensity of tourism and the abundance and diversity of the species that can be found in the peninsula. Although the groups were admitted, the objectives and dynamics of rural monitoring programs were not well suited for them because their activities mostly took place in urban spaces (Carlos, interview). This provided NABCI with another critical mass opportunity: to expand its reach to the urban nuclei, a direction that was not previously considered:

Personally, it was something that did not interest me, but in our team some people were pushing very, very hard in that direction. It was clear to us that if we had 75% of the country's population in cities, we needed to generate a way for these people to be interested in birds. (Morales, interview)

To create the Programa de Aves Urbanas (PAU) in 2016, the NABCI used Cornell's Celebrate Urban Birds project as a model – another example of transculturation – albeit adapting its activities to the Mexican context (Norma, interview).²⁴ There are several areas of confluence between both networks, but the PAU's objectives differ distinctively from the ones of the RMC. While the rural initiative has an inherent economic motivation at its core, the PAU's main objective is to promote birding to the public and to encourage people to learn more about nature using birds as a backdoor strategy. “It is a program that wants to provide an activity that is relaxing, that is educational, and that at the same time helps us to provide data about birds in the cities” (Norma, interview).

The PAU club members organize periodic monitoring field trips in national and local parks, protected natural areas within cities, semi-rural ejidos, artificial lakes, dams, botanical gardens, museums, and other urban spaces, including parking lots, and backyards. These sightings are constantly accompanied by other complementary initiatives, such as festivals, film screenings, storytelling, music, graffiti and urban art, lectures, costume contests, and other recreational pursuits, highlighting the attempt to reach a more general audience. To this day, the PAU has 388 members, between club coordinators and trainers, and has a presence in more than 40 cities in Mexico. The coordinators and trainers form a national committee that promotes PAU projects by inviting the public to participate and to do science communication. They also oversee the operation of the PAU. Unlike the RMC, most of the PAU members have not been summoned, but have been arriving on their own, “It’s like they were just waiting for the NABCI to create a program suited for them” (Norma, interview). Several of them were already involved in birding, they were people who had other jobs and practiced birding as a hobby: students and academics from different universities. Or they were institutions that wanted to incorporate birding into their outreach programs: schools, museums, and zoos that ended up increasing the critical mass. They were “Members who understand very well that science has to become more flexible, more for the people” (Norma, interview). To organize their events, club members work together horizontally in establishing the dynamics and the calls for participants, generally through their social media accounts:

We divide the work, for example, if we have to make a poster, someone says, ‘now it's your turn’ or they say, ‘I'll do it’ and another one says ‘I'll do this one’ and so we take turns. It's like everyone is collaborating. (Mina, bird club leader, interview)²⁵

The places for urban sighting are selected by different criteria, but with the notion of summoning up enough people from the public, mainly casual attendees. Clubs use the hotspots displayed in eBird as a starting point, but the location must be accessible and preferably with a body of water. “If it's Sunday we look for a place that is easy to get to because there is no adequate transportation, not everybody has a car, many go by public transport” (Mina, interview). Clubs seek to vary their birding locations, so as not to repeat places, but also the hook of catching a specific species plays into the choice. Since there is a constant interaction and relationship through the two networks and the linkage with CONABIO, some PAU clubs seek the RMC groups to go bird in their lands. Safety is also considered. PAU members are also expected to register the data produced during their sightings in eBird, and although most of these monitoring events are open to the public, the club members are always in charge of uploading the data to ensure that it is correct. As we have seen, the urban and rural birding publics in Mexico are differently situated, which calls for different design and aims of public policies. Despite Norma’s assertion that the publics of birding were already there, waiting to be engaged (which in a sense they were), public policies have been instrumental to the formation of both networks.

6. Autonomy and critical mass

A noteworthy feature of these initiatives is that the community organizations developed their own self-management systems to operate autonomously. This is essential to creating a critical mass that is independent from NABCI and other institutions, although community organizations have remained linked to them, for the most part. The Huilotl Tostlán network, for instance, generated internal regulations and created a savings fund to cover its own needs. The La Chiantla group already had pre-existing models of territorial and resource management in the indigenous communities, and the ejidatarios of the Tacaná Volcano Biosphere Reserve created nurseries to cultivate the seeds used to feed the horned guan and created hunting restrictions (Ortega-Álvarez, Sánchez González, and Berlanga 2015).

For both networks NABCI has established communication channels to keep the coordinators in the loop: Facebook accounts and very active WhatsApp groups. One key activity for integrating and articulating groups and clubs from different regions of Mexico are the Annual Encounters, for the PAU and the RMC, in which the pajareros and pajareras have a chance to meet in person and work together to build joint initiatives. According NABCI officials, these meetings have proven to be very successful, “They have become almost unmanageable due to the number of people involved” (Morales, interview). And the activities of the groups and clubs have come to the point that they no longer depend on the government agency, “In the end, what you are doing is triggering processes and fortunately we have been able to accompany the process permanently” (Morales, interview). To this day, the PAU, for instance, has organized three in-person gatherings, in Valle de Bravo, Cozumel, and Jilotepec, in which the local clubs were greatly involved. They also organized one virtual meeting in 2021 that, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, took place through Zoom, Facebook and YouTube. I was invited to attend the last two meetings (Jilotepec and virtual). It should be noted that for the on-site events, CONABIO provides free housing and meals for the attendees, so it is unlikely that they could be replicated as an individual enterprise.

Social networks have also played a fundamental role for the networks’ growth and continuance:

People link a lot through Facebook and announce activities: ‘Pajareada this Saturday’ or “Students from the Faculty of Sciences, Zanates Rabiosos, are going to organize a pajareada in the Tuxtlas” and they go to the Tuxtlas station of the UNAM. And what do they do? They rent a bus and go for a weekend; they are young kids and sometimes they take more experienced people with them and do collective activities related to birdwatching. (Morales, interview)

The institution and the clubs have developed some sort of horizontal relationship. Sometimes pajareros seek NABCI for advice, or to exchange readings and contacts. On other occasions, NABCI relies on local clubs and brigades to conduct training and recruiting activities for new members. All the clubs have adopted the PAU, RMC, NABCI, and CONABIO’s logos and have incorporated them to their publications, banners, posters, even T-shirts and vests. The latest stage of the evolution of the critical mass has been the internationalization of the PAU. Since 2021, the Program has incorporated local chapters in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panamá, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Perú, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina.

7. The materialities of critical mass

The eBird portal was conceived as one of the main axes for the building of the pajarero community in Mexico, thus, it was also fundamental to creating a critical mass, and essential to the budding epistemic culture of birders. “It is going slowly, but in fourteen, fifteen years the number of users of the platform has reached around ten, twelve thousand. In Mexico, just in Mexico. This was unthinkable” (Morales, interview). The portal is a technological development created by scientists and is structured around the priorities of institutions and academia, with the message of helping science at the forefront. Its goals are data-driven and exploration-centered; its developments are determined by politics. The translation and transculturation of the eBird portal is one of these developments. To engage more users, portal designers have been attempting to make each version of eBird more flexible and accessible, lowering the bar for less experienced birders:

We want to engage people that are very early on in their learning process, but the truth is that someone who has never looked at birds before is going to have trouble identifying the birds. So that's why we're encouraging people to take photos of the birds, to use applications like Merlin, to help them identify birds and what they're able to see. (Duke, interview)

The launch of Merlin, a sister App interconnected with eBird that can identify bird species by uploading a photograph or an audio recording with chants, is another one. Lately, Cornell launched an eBird App for mobile devices that allows birders to track their routes using GPS and register their sights in the field, without having to wait until they have access to a computer. For NABCI, eBird is an important channel of information to feed the Sistema Nacional de Información sobre Biodiversidad (SNIB), “An essential part of the participation is that this information goes to the platform because it makes no sense to do the whole process when the information is not getting here” (Carlos, interview). The crucial objective, acknowledged by the conservation initiative’s officials, is that the data are used for scientific purposes (Norma, interview). To this end, RMC and PAU coordinators are asked to register data and foster the same behavior in the public.

Given the relevance that NABCI has given to the digital, it is perhaps not surprising that eBird has become one of the main spaces of tension and dispute between the institution and its publics. Even though the amount of data uploaded to the portal is already considerable, there is a generalized concern among the officials of NABCI that the practice of recording observations is not sufficiently ingrained in some groups and individuals. Some of the limitations are evident, like the lack of access to the necessary technology or internet signal, for instance in some of the most remote ejidal and indigenous communities that belong to the RMC (Carlos, interview). But the situation seems to go further than that:

At the last gathering of the Monitors’ Meeting, I asked the hundred and twenty monitors: “What problem do you have to upload the data to eBird?” The answer was internet access. I said, “Oh, really? Who owns a computer here?” Many of them are farmers, peasants, and fishermen. Only half of them raised their hands. Then I asked, “Who doesn't have a smartphone?” Only one raised his hand. (Morales, interview)

Community monitors do not use the portal as much as NABCI would like them to. They are regarded as disciplined and eager to contribute, to go out and gather data, but not many of them have become users of eBird yet. They don't have a personal account, and they don't use the visualization tools to learn about migration patterns or rare records; they don’t consult the portal to know what birds to expect at any given time or to compare their profiles with the most active birders. The ability to consult the portal and digitize information is not restricted, as Morales’ question revealed, by technology. Community monitors often feel more comfortable writing the data down on paper and giving it to a coordinator who then compiles the information and eventually uploads it through the computer (Morales, interview).²⁶ PAU coordinators have also noticed a lack of motivation to upload data: “It has been difficult for citizens to start including records. In the case of the Urban Bird Program, it has been more difficult to motivate them to make records” (Norma, interview). At every Annual Meeting different strategies are drawn to counteract this perceived passivity, “What we do is we post pictures of the birding on Facebook and we also upload the listing and share it, in the hope that the participants will say ‘Can you tag me?’, ‘Share it’. But it never happens” (Mina, interview).

8. Final comments

The contribution of data to produce scientific knowledge by amateurs, enthusiasts, and community monitors cannot be understood without considering their different production contexts. In this paper, I have outlined the history of how birding communities were created in Mexico, practically from scratch, through a series of institutional programs and initiatives aimed at the critical mass effect: exponentially and consistently multiplying the users and data. My intention has not been to ignore the inherent politics that have been established between institutions and communities, nor to take for granted the strategies that these institutions have undertaken to create them and their economic ideologies. Through the case study of pajarero communities in Mexico I have tried to depict a complex reality in which the people who have been engaged by institutions have agency, and are not mere tools of top-down institutional programs, nor have they been treated like tools.

Citizen science infrastructures have provided spaces for negotiating knowledge and practices. Citizen science initiatives can also be a locus to explore power dynamics for environmental activism and observations that will end up producing scientific knowledge. This means that birding can be studied as a complex and dynamic epistemic culture that allows for questioning understandings of the public as an entity just to be discovered and engaged.

NABCI had to adapt its strategies to different contexts, but the first step was to take an Algo-Saxon practice and make it relevant to the Mexican environment. This included a process of translation and transculturation, that is, changing the language, adjusting the data, but also executing recruitment strategies for each specific social situation and relevant community: ejidatarios, indigenous people, college students, and enthusiasts all experience radically different conditions in Mexico, and they all have very different motivations to participate. Even if NABCI's officials still feel that they have not reached their goal, the fact is that today there is a plethora of birding communities in a country where there used to be only a few birders, and these communities continue to grow.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Conacyt.

Notes on contributors

L. Arturo Vallejo-Novoa

L. Arturo Vallejo-Novoa is a Mexican doctoral candidate in Philosophy of Science (Science and Technology Studies track) at UNAM (Mexico City). With a background in Film & Literature Studies, he is interested in techno-scientific narratives and imaginaries, particularly regarding STS & Media Studies. Arturo is a full-time professor in the Media & Digital Culture Department at Tecnológico de Monterrey university.

Notes

1 This practice is considered to have formally started in 1900 with the first Christmas Bird Count organized by ornithologist Frank M. Chapman in North America, although its spirit goes way back to John James Audubon’s travels to paint birds in the 1820s (Audubon 2015; Carlson 2012; Weidensaul 2008) and even further to the hobbies of the English aristocracy and bourgeoisie in the countryside in the eighteenth century (Moss 2013) and far beyond.

2 There were previous initiatives to recruit volunteers to gather data about birds, but digital technologies have massified the scope, aims, and objectives of birding-produced information to levels never possible before (Bonney et al. 2010; Hemment, Ellis, and Wynne 2011).

3 In English, the National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity and the North American Bird Conservation Initiative, respectively.

4 Abby Kinchy, for instance, writes: “I had a couple of experiences where I was invited to collaborate on ‘citizen science’ initiatives that were starting up on my campus. Natural scientists were interested in using volunteers to do innovative research, and computer scientists wanted to develop new ways to aggregate and share citizen-collected data. I decided not to pursue these collaborations because they didn’t resonate with my values. I felt that these projects were starting with professional researchers’ interests, not concerns for significant public issues or communities affected by environmental problems” (Kimura and Kinchy, 2019, xi), although she then wonders how she could have influenced these projects through her involvement.

5 To anonymize the Mexican participants, I have used the names of the characters from the novel El tañido de una flauta (1972), by Puebla-born writer Sergio Pitol.

6 The Meeting took place between the 25 and 29 of September 2019 in the municipality of Jilotepec, Estado de México. All my exchanges with El Chino were informal conversations and took place during this event unless otherwise specified.

7 Interview conducted in Mexico City (February 2, 2018). Hereafter, the quotations attributed to Morales come from the same interview unless otherwise specified.

8 In Mexico, an ejido is an area of communal land used for agriculture in which community members have usufruct rights rather than ownership rights to the land. The lands were usually granted to the communities by the government after the Revolution.

9 National Biodiversity Information System.

10 Regarding the roles of the institutions in recruiting volunteers to collect scientific information for them, we should not ignore some of the most pungent critiques, such as the use of citizen science programs as a front to push institutions' agendas, as public relations stunts, or the risk of turning these practices into a show, rather than producing genuine knowledge distribution (Blacker, Kimura, and Kinchy 2021; Piña Romero 2017). There is also the concern about institutions’ role in scientific dumping: a means to avoid hiring professionals, and as a form of exploiting invisible labor (Mirowski 2017; M. Scroggins 2017), with productive activities that go unpaid are unregulated. However, the most pervasive critique of institutionalized citizen science is that the participating audiences have been convened by institutions and researchers to serve the interests of science, suggesting that since this is not spontaneous participation, therefore it is somehow illegitimate or that the publics are being exploited. My experience of spending time with the pajarero communities and participating with them in birding activities has shown me that the relationship between institutions and pajarero communities in Mexico does not conform to any of these descriptions.

11 Behind the proposal by Guston lies the concept of Public Engagement with Science and Technology (PEST). Halfway between science communication and public participation in science, this framework studies the involvement of citizens in the debate and regulatory process related to scientific-technological developments (Oliveira and Carvalho 2015).

12 Interview conducted in Mexico City (September 9, 2019). Hereafter, the accounts attributed to Duke come from the same interview unless otherwise specified. To anonymize the American participant, I used a character from “Unlighted Lamps” (1921) a short story from Ohio-born author Sherwood Anderson. At first, the Mexican version could effectively be found as aVerAves, and some pajareros still refer to it by that name, however, this version of the platform can also be found by its original English name and is more commonly referred to by it.

13 Transculturation is a term first coined by Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz to differentiate it from acculturation – the process of acquiring a new culture – from the creation of new cultural phenomenon (Marrero Léon 2013; Ortiz 1983).

14 These notions are also following Jason Chilvers and Matthew Kearnes' (2016a; 2016b; 2020) retooling of the participatory turn and co-production concepts first advocated by Sheila Jasanoff (2003; 2004).

15 The Integrated Ecosystem Management was an intersectoral project that had the objective of combining the use of natural resources with environmental protection measures through environmental policies and engaging of local communities (Carranza Sánchez and Rodrìguez Ramírez 2009).

16 The National Commission of Protected Natural Areas.

17 In this context, community monitoring or participatory monitoring consists of recruiting people from local communities to collect data using protocols and methodologies designed in scientific institutions. In addition to the increase in information, this scheme has been promoted because it seems to offer other advantages for scientists, such as tapping into local knowledge, raising awareness among populations about the importance of conservation, and as an alternative for environmental education. Birds have been a particularly popular animal class for participatory monitoring because they are good biological indicators, as their species respond differentially to environmental changes, their sampling is relatively easy and accessible, they are the taxa that have been studied the most, and are attractive to non-specialists (Sánchez González and Ortega-Álvarez 2015; Şekercioğlu 2012).

18 The Mesoamerican Biological Corridor Mexico.

19 Interview conducted in Mexico City (March 8, 2018). Hereafter, the accounts attributed to Carlos, a former Coordinator of the Red de Monitoreo Comunitario, come from the same interview unless otherwise specified.

20 The Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, the National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples, the Ministry of Tourism, and the Intercultural University of Chiapas, respectively.

21 The Community Monitoring Network.

22 In point counts, all birds detected (visually and aurally) within a given area during a defined time are identified and counted from a given site.

23 The last stage of the CBM-M unfolded in 2018.

24 Interview conducted in Mexico City (April 21, 2018). Hereafter, the accounts attributed to Norma, the PAU Coordinator, come from the same interview unless otherwise specified.

25 Interview conducted in Mexico City (April 21, 2018). Hereafter, the accounts attributed to Mina come from the same interview unless otherwise specified.

26 In another example of how eBird has become a space of dispute, the coordinator of the monitoring group of Milpa Alta once told me during a conversation that they were building their own database, apart from eBird.