A government initiative in Colombia that has the support of international institutions aims to set up a complete database of Colombian bird species that are held in ornithological collections around the world, in order to contribute to environmental controls and conservation programmes. The Biomap project is being carried out by the Natural Sciences Institute of Colombia’s National University, the London Museum of Natural History, the Darwin Initiative in Britain, and several other institutions.

Visitors to the www.biomap.net web site can enjoy access (in Spanish) to the 40,000 pieces of data collected so far by three teams of researchers in Colombia, North America and Europe.

Colombia is the country with the greatest number of bird species in the world, with more than 1,800 known species. But virtually nothing is known about some of the species.