The Biodiversity Foundation of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and the Environment held a meeting today at its headquarters in Madrid with representatives of the Scientific Societies related to nature conservation in Spain. With this meeting, the Foundation wants to open a channel of communication and collaboration for the exchange of information and knowledge.
 
The idea is to establish a formalized collaboration framework with all those scientific societies interested in working together in the conservation of biodiversity. Both the Foundation and the attending entities have signed a collaboration protocol by which they undertake, among other things, to hold regular meetings to promote common projects and exchange information on the work carried out by both sectors.
 
Among the collaborations that are proposed are advice on common lines of work, the exchange of knowledge and work methodologies, the possibility of collaborating in projects or the exchange of professionals on volunteering issues.
 
The director of the Biodiversity Foundation, Sonia Castañeda, who chaired the meeting, stressed that “this collaboration will allow science to be increasingly present in conservation projects and will strengthen the work of the Foundation and scientific societies in our common goal of biodiversity conservation”
 
This first meeting was attended by representatives of 13 scientific societies, although “this collaboration is open to the incorporation of many more”, said Castañeda.
 
The scientific societies that attended this first meeting were the Spanish Ornithological Society (SEO), the Spanish Association of Terrestrial Ecology, the University Institute of Forest Management, the Spanish Society of Forest Sciences (SECF), the Iberian Association of Limnology (AIL), the Spanish Society for the Conservation and Study of Mammals (SECEM), the Spanish Society of Plant Conservation Biology (Sebicop), the Spanish Association for the Conservation and Study of Bats, the Spanish Herpetological Association (AHE), the Spanish Society of Geobotany, the Spanish Society of Ethology and Evolutionary Ecology, the Spanish Association of Entomology and the Geological Society   of Spain (SGE).