Last month I was fortunate enough to travel down to Cambridge to the new David Attenborough building, whilst on a course with the RSPB. Whilst there I learnt more about the purpose of the building, which has been named after the famous naturalist, and what they hope to achieve there. It has been built to work as a hub where leaders in conservation can work together to tackle the problems facing us in conservation today. An exciting concept as this will be the largest cluster of biodiversity conservation organisations in the world. It’s a fantastic building; full of open spaces, artwork and information on the many plants and animals that have been named after David Attenborough (These include a fantastic looking spiny anteater and a Madagascan ghost shrimp!). There are nine partners working with the initiative including the likes of the RSPB, BirdLife International and the IUCN. The IUCN assess the conservation status of species on a global scale and grade them from least concern to extinct.
Sir David's long-beaked echidna (Photo by Jaganath, creativecommons.org)
David Attenborough was there to open the building, and did so in style by abseiling down the 13 foot ‘living wall’ that climbs through the centre of the building. His thoughts on the new project: “Our natural world is threatened as never before. The threats are both numerous and interrelated, and no one institution, however effective, can hope to address them all alone," says David Attenborough. "By bringing together leaders in research, practice, policy and teaching, we stand the greatest chance of developing the solutions required to save our planet.”
Walking around you can see people from different organisations working together and it really makes me feel excited about what they can achieve. That this place has been purpose built to inspire innovation and collaboration is clear. And as David Attenborough said, the problems we face cannot possibly be addressed alone. Only by working together can we bring about real change before it’s too late. For example on the 2012 IUCN Red List 13% of birds are considered threatened, so it’s not a minute too soon. So I greatly look forward to seeing what comes of this partnership, hopefully the beginnings of real action to preserve our planets biodiversity. I also hope that this is the catalyst to start other such collaborations across the world, and I think it will.