Advancing Knowledge of Biodiversity,
Ensuring the Future of Earth’s Species
Living Earth Collaborative is the premier science-driven consortium engaged in leading edge biodiversity research and education. Through research and training, the consortium develops new approaches to biodiversity and conservation science that foster the next generation of scientists and provides tangible benefits for applying results to conserving biodiversity at local to global scales.
The study of biodiversity provides a critical window into the ecosystems and environments that support all living organisms. What we can learn through the study of biodiversity may ultimately be the key to continuation of life on earth.
The LEC will utilize the unique resources of the consortium partners to lead programs that sustain and regenerate biodiversity and foster places where humans and nature can thrive in the era of global environmental change.
Urban Biodiversity
Global Conservation Futures
Biodiversity and Human Well-Being
- The IUCN and WWF identifies climate change and biodiversity loss as twin crises. The combined impact of unprecedented change to Earth systems by humans, together with a human-caused rapidly changing climate, means that up to 1 million species are at imminent risk of extinction.
- According to research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Earth is undergoing a biological annihilation.
Source: Ceballos, G. & Ehrlich, P. (2023). Mutilation of the tree of life via mass extinction of animal genera - Global populations of fish, birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles declined by 73 percent between 1970 and 2020.
Source: WWF Living Planet Report 2024 - 45% of all known flowering plants and three in four of the world’s unknown plant species is threatened with extinction, putting supplies of food and medicines at risk.
Source: 2023 State of the World’s Plants report, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew - Although extinction is a natural phenomenon, occurring at background rate of one to five species a year, scientists estimate we’re now losing species at 1,000 to 10,000 times the background rate, with literally dozens going extinct every day.
Source: Chivian, E. and A. Bernstein (eds.) Sustaining life: How human health depends on biodiversity. Center for Health and the Global Environment. Oxford University Press, New York. - IPBES, WWF, and IUCN identified five threats responsible for the current biodiversity crisis: biological invasions, climate change, habitat loss and degradation, overexploitation, and pollution. Source: IPBES. (2019).Global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.
The Living Earth CollaborativeTM is unique in part because of the partnerships among three leading institutions in the study of plant and animal science – Washington University, the Missouri Botanical Garden, and the Saint Louis Zoo.