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Updated on 6 October 2026
This short article focuses on the information you should consider asking a tour company before booking a birding tour with them.
We start with southern Africa and then move around the world just to give you an idea of the sorts of things to look for.
Africa: Namibia and South Africa
It’s frustrating to see birding tour operators in Namibia and South Africa cutting corners and operating illegally, while we invest considerable time and money in ensuring full compliance, only to compete with their cheaper tours. The laws are there for a reason, most of them to protect you, our valued clients.
Foreign guides and tour leaders need a work permit to guide a tour in Namibia or South Africa. This for example means that South African, European or American guides can’t lead a trip in Namibia unless they have a work permit. For a guide to arrange a work permit, this person has to guide for a company that is registered as a foreign tour operator in Namibia. Birding Ecotours is indeed registered with the Namibia Tourism Board (NTB) as such, so it’s easy for us to arrange the necessary work permits for our guides.
For both Namibia and South Africa, if the guide drives, this person must have a Namibian or South African driver’s license and a professional driving permit (PDP). The PDP is assessed more often than a normal driver’s license. To get a PDP one has to prove that one is medically fit to drive paying passengers and one also has to prove a clean police record. So these are good rules, as they protect the client, ensuring a certain level of safety.
Please do consider asking your birding tour operator whether your guide has the necessary work permit if you are not using a local guide, and whether the tour’s driver has a valid PDP. If you are looking to book a birding tour to Namibia, you can check whether your tour operator is registered on this page.
In South Africa it is also a legal requirement for all guides to be registered with the local government. To register with this, the guide has to prove three things:
- Adequate knowledge of nature/birding in South Africa. Most guides get this through FGASA, but there are certainly other avenues too.
- A valid first aid certificate. What happens if a guest starts choking or having a heart attack during a tour? Does your guide have a basic, passing knowledge of what to do and how to take control of that situation?
- The guide’s PDP has to be shown to be valid, if the guide does any driving.
Namibia has similar rules.
Public liability, passenger liability, and other insurance types are also needed, usually applicable to the tour vehicle being used.
European countries are becoming stricter
To guide legally in Iceland or mainland European countries, the guide has to have a European passport (and British passports don’t suffice any more outside of the UK). Iceland needs a safety plan for any tour to be operated. And there are lots of other laws to be aware of; these are just examples.
Companies accepting UK and European clients onto their tours, have to have insolvency insurance to cover these good folks (by law), which we do have. That’s only possible because we have a registered company in the UK (as well as in the USA, South Africa, etc.).
Asia
Again, many of these same sorts of things apply throughout this vast continent. We also have to keep up with changing rules, for example in Indonesia many of the rules about including local guides on tours have become stricter recently.
Australia and New Zealand are strict and have added new rules since we started operating as a company
There are many permit and licensing requirements we have to have in place to legally operate in Australasia. This is as always very costly. Here (and in other parts of the world for that matter), we often have to use local guides/drivers. These great folks not only keep things legal for us, but also provide a wealth of local knowledge which only enhances the tours.
The Americas
Many of these same issues apply in Canada, the USA, central America, the Caribbean and South America. Park permits are also a major consideration in North America.
Conclusion
We don’t cut corners even though it is costly and time-consuming with a huge amount of paperwork, to ensure we legally operate everywhere, and that we keep up to date with changing laws across the planet.
