The director of the Biodiversity Foundation, a public foundation of the Government of Spain, under the Ministry of the Environment, Rural and Marine Affairs, Ana Leiva, presented today, during the meeting “Objective 2010: Stop the Loss of Biodiversity”, the objectives and areas of work of this entity, as well as its commitments to the IUCN “Countdown 2010” campaign. The Biodiversity Foundation has organized this meeting within the framework of the IUCN World Conservation Congress, which is being held in Barcelona from October 5 to 14.

The Biodiversity Foundation has been working for a decade in the field of conservation, recovery, study and sustainable use of biodiversity. In 2006 it joined the “Countdown 2010” initiative. The “Countdown 2010” is an initiative of the World Conservation Union (ICN) by which a European alliance is created to stop the loss of biodiversity, pointing to the year 2010 as the first goal for the achievement of objectives.

Every year, the Biodiversity Foundation contributes to the objective of halting the loss of biodiversity through research, training and awareness-raising actions, and by participating in more than 250 conservation projects, both in Spain and through international development cooperation.

During this meeting, the main lines of action of the Biodiversity Foundation were presented, as well as specific projects resulting from its collaboration with other administrations, entities and organizations in the environmental sector. Likewise, Ana Leiva explained those projects that are being carried out to preserve the conservation and sustainable use of natural heritage and biodiversity, the actions that are being carried out to promote the sustainable development of the rural environment, and how research and knowledge of the environment and the rural and marine environment are being advanced.

During this event, the president of the Brown Bear Foundation, Guillermo Palomero, the general director of Rural Infrastructure Development, Junta de Extremadura, Ángela Emilia León, and the director of the Observatory of Sustainability in Spain, Luis Jiménez, also took part.

Prior to this meeting, the director of the Biodiversity Foundation, Ana Leiva, participated in the meeting “Public participation in the conservation of biodiversity in Spain”, organized by the Spanish Committee of the IUCN and in the round table “International cooperation in the Ibero-American space: New instruments for its optimization through the creation of knowledge networks”.