What Adrián Stagi Left Behind on the Fields of the Southern Cone

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It’s been a few weeks since Adrián Stagi’s passing, and yet his absence continues to make itself felt in ways that are hard to explain. In conversations where his name comes up again and again. On country roads that no longer feel the same. At gatherings where someone inevitably recalls a phrase of his, a sharp observation, or a comment laced with that brilliant, sarcastic humor that always seemed to emerge at just the right moment.

Sometimes you don’t need to have known someone for decades to understand something essential about who they were. Sometimes a few hours spent together on the road, chatting over mate, are enough.

Last year, during a visit to Uruguay to tour various farms associated with the Alianza del Pastizal, Adrián decided to devote several full days to personally accompanying me. It was no small gesture. Amid rural roads, long conversations, and constant stops to observe birds, fields, and local realities, I began to understand something I would later hear echoed in many other voices: Adrián didn’t just have a deep knowledge of grasslands. He had developed a way of inhabiting them, explaining them, and helping others connect with them.

He drove while pointing out species in the distance with the ease of someone conversing with a familiar landscape. He spoke of farmers, conservation, birds, politics, food, local history, and the management of the natural countryside as part of a single conversation. He didn’t seem like someone who was merely “visiting” the countryside. He seemed like someone deeply embedded in those relationships.

Perhaps that explains why so many people remember him so fondly today, from such diverse backgrounds.

A biologist by training, a leading figure at Aves Uruguay, and a key driving force behind the Grassland Alliance in Uruguay, Adrián dedicated much of his life to connecting people, species, production, and conservation within a single vision. He served as executive director of Aves Uruguay and also held positions in departmental public administration in Río Negro, where his environmental work extended far beyond the institutional sphere. Uruguayan media remembered him as one of the country’s most active voices in biodiversity conservation, birding tourism, and the protection of natural grasslands.

Through Aves Uruguay, he spearheaded projects related to the care of natural grasslands, sustainable production, birdwatching, and nature tourism. He also promoted actions against bird trafficking in border areas, cooperation agreements with private actors, and opportunities for collaboration with producers, researchers, and environmental organizations.

However, reducing his legacy to a list of positions or projects would be insufficient.

Many people do not describe him simply as a biologist or a conservationist. They describe him as an ambassador for the countryside: someone capable of helping others understand that grasslands are not just about biodiversity, production, or landscape. They are also about culture, connections, knowledge, memory, the economy, birds, livestock, families, everyday decisions, and a concrete way of life.

Adrián could move seamlessly among organizations, public institutions, rural producers, scientists, tourists, birdwatchers, and local communities without losing his authenticity in any of those settings. In Uruguay, a country where human connections tend to be closer, this was particularly evident. He was welcomed as a friend. Someone who would walk into a home and sit down at the table like a lifelong friend. Someone who would talk about biodiversity just as naturally as he spoke about daily life, a good wine, the country’s challenges, or the tensions inherent in sustaining conservation in Latin America.

His immediate family included his mother and his brother. Over the years, however, Adrián also built a chosen family: friends, colleagues, producers, fellow travelers, and people for whom his presence became part of daily life. Daniela Schossler, coordinator of the Alianza del Pastizal in Uruguay, was one of those close friends who stood by him not only at work but also during the most difficult days. That emotional dimension is no minor detail. It helps explain why his absence is felt not only as an institutional loss, but also as a deeply human and personal one.

Conservation has never been easy. Much less so for deeply local organizations that often must operate with limited resources, small structures, and a heavy reliance on the personal commitment of those who sustain them. In a network as diverse as BirdLife International’s—where large international organizations coexist with local grassroots groups and a wealth of field expertise—Adrián embodied precisely that other dimension of conservation: the one built on closeness, persistence, good humor, and long-term human relationships.

The interesting thing is that, in the end, impact isn’t always proportional to the size of an organization. Sometimes it stems from people capable of bridging different worlds and fostering conversations that others would consider impossible. Sometimes it’s measured in terms of agreements, projects, and programs, but also in terms of trust—in farmers who open the doors to their homes; in children who learn to observe birds with curiosity and joy; In budding naturalists discovering an ecosystem. In fields that are beginning to be understood from a broader perspective than that of immediate productivity.

In Adrián’s case, both dimensions coexisted. There was the visible impact: his work with Aves Uruguay, his participation in the Pastizal Alliance alongside organizations from Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, his promotion of birdwatching tourism, his collaboration with farmers, and his involvement in technical working groups and conservation projects. There was also the impact that was harder to measure: the way he helped very different people come together around the same table and share a common vision—almost always with a touch of humor.

Those who worked closely with him especially remember his ability to build bridges. The way he listened. His willingness to collaborate when he sensed a shared purpose. His conviction that grasslands could not be understood solely from the perspective of biodiversity, but also from that of the people who live in, work in, and protect them.

They also recall something harder to describe: his presence. His binoculars always close at hand. His ability to get genuinely excited about a bird, a landscape, or an unexpected humorous conversation. That rare blend of quiet observation and deeply insightful, witty remarks. His constant sense of humor. The feeling that behind every field trip, there was always something more to show, something more to understand.

His death, at age 57 following a serious infection, should not turn his story into sensationalist fodder or a tale of sacrifice, but it does leave us with a reflection that’s hard to ignore: there are professional lives that cannot be lived from a distance. Field conservation is experienced with one’s whole being: on trails, at dawn, in meetings, through exhaustion, the weather, mud, difficult decisions, and constant exposure to what one is trying to understand and protect. For Adrián, that intensity wasn’t just a pose.

It was a way of being in the world.

His world.

That is why his absence hit hard both within our international alliance and in the conservation community of the Southern Cone. Beyond the projects, Adrián seemed to embody a particular way of relating to the world: one in which conservation was rooted in human connection, shared knowledge, and the patient building of trust.

Now, as the Pastizal Alliance approaches its 20th anniversary, that reflection takes on even greater meaning. An anniversary like this is usually a cause for celebration. It should be, but it can also be a moment to pause and recognize those who made it possible for an idea to become a network, a practice, a conversation, a legacy, and a shared culture. Adrián was part of that story. Not as a figurehead from the past, but as someone whose vision remains present in the way many people today understand the value of natural grasslands.

Networks survive thanks to people who leave behind something deeper than immediate results—people who help others see things differently; who shape new generations of nature lovers and advocates, connecting stakeholders who previously didn’t listen to one another; who turn a vision into a living culture.

My desktop background features a quote that always invites me to reflect on my role and my impact: “One day, when you’re gone, you’ll be what you did.” Perhaps that’s where part of Adrián Stagi’s legacy lies.

In the people who continue to birdwatch thanks to him. In the fields he explored. In the conversations he sparked. In the bonds he helped forge. In the way so many people learned to understand grasslands not only as an ecosystem, but also as a living network of human, cultural, and ecological relationships worth preserving. And also in that quiet certainty that some people, even after they’re gone, continue to help us see the world in a different light.

Text: Diego Ribadeneira