Cemex renewed its global alliance with BirdLife International, the world’s largest nature conservation coalition, for three more years. The company has national relationships with BirdLife partners in the U.S., Mexico and the Dominican Republic, among others.
“This global alliance continues to demonstrate the mutual benefits that conservation action, both within and outside the quarry, can create for both nature and business,” said Vicente Saiso Alva, corporate director of sustainability at Cemex. “BirdLife and Cemex share a common vision, so they are the right organization to help us continue to build a better future.”
Through ongoing initiatives, this global alliance has delivered meaningful and long-term conservation for the benefit of nature. One successful project in northwest Mexico involved identifying priorities for biodiversity management and furthering scientific knowledge of the emblematic, but poorly understood, Golden Eagle. The next phase will be to enhance its habitat around the Cerrito Blanco quarry – Sonora Desert grassland – and fit radio-trackers on young birds to better understand their post-natal dispersal.
The Cemex-BirdLife partnership in the Dominican Republic is making significant progress: extensive field surveys revealed threatened reptiles and 67 new records of plant species for the area around the Las Salinas quarry, including the endemic, threatened Guaiac Tree. These surveys provided a rich illustration of the area’s biodiversity, identifying priority species and habitats for action in 2015.
BirdLife’s CEO Patricia Zurita welcomed the partnership renewal. “BirdLife’s partnership with Cemex demonstrates the power of innovative business-NGO partnerships in terms of the on-the-ground delivery for important bird & biodiversity areas, nature and people. I am delighted with the successes of recent years, through both the national partnerships and biodiversity action plan projects. Now we are poised to take this longstanding partnership to the next level,” stated Zurita.
