Our 2025 Annual Report is here!

This was a particularly meaningful year for us, as we celebrated the Red Siskin Initiative’s tenth birthday!

In 2025, we continued advancing our work within the SAFE Red Siskin program. Our inaugural 2026–2028 SAFE Red Siskin Program Plan was approved and published on the AZA website, on the SAFE species page. This plan outlines our strategic objectives and reinforces the international partnerships that will continue to strengthen red siskin conservation.

In addition, thanks to our partners at Zoo New England, we completed the evaluation of the first set of potential reintroduction areas. Looking ahead to 2026, we have refined our approach and identified a new set of priority areas for further evaluation.

In the area of Connecting with people, we launched our Red Siskin Art Section on social media, featuring the work of more than 30 artists who have portrayed this beloved bird in their art, helping to connect conservation with culture and creativity.

We also successfully concluded our fourth breeding season, hatching 21 red siskin chicks in our breeding facility. Strategic pairings produced healthy, vigorous chicks with low inbreeding levels and high genetic diversity, both essential to ensuring the species’ long-term viability.

In 2025, we also completed the fourth phase of the Birds and Coffee Project, funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). Over nine years of continuous work, this project has helped protect and restore vital siskin habitat while strengthening the link between conservation and sustainable production in the Venezuelan Coastal Range.

Finally, the Flying Together Initiative published a study showing how social and cultural dynamics strongly influence the demand for red siskins. This new perspective, integrating science and social behavior, is essential for designing more effective behavior change campaigns, offering hope for the conservation of the red siskin and other songbirds, and promoting a more responsible and sustainable future.

These are just a few of the year’s highlights.
If you would like to learn more, you can read the full annual report here.