The Biodiversity Forum, a space for environmental and scientific dissemination of the Biodiversity Foundation of the Ministry of the Environment, Rural and Marine Affairs (MARM) in conjunction with the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), located in the Patio de Banderas of the Reales Alcázares in Seville, has been awarded as one of the 10 best ideas of 2010 to save nature.

For the fourth consecutive year, RED Life magazine, a Sevillian publication specialising in the dissemination of flora and fauna threatened with extinction in the Iberian Peninsula, together with the Caja Rural del Sur Foundation, will award the prize for the “Ten best ideas to save nature” for the year 2010. The award ceremony will take place in Huelva on Monday, May 31 at 10:30 a.m., in the auditorium of the Caja Rural del Sur Foundation (C/ Mora Claros, 6).

As every year, RED Life proposed a list of about 20 projects that, in the words of the organization, “have contributed in some way over the last year to the conservation of biodiversity”; and the election of the 10 best initiatives was made through the vote of the readers, either using the coupon provided for this purpose in the publication itself or through its website. On this occasion, about 3 thousand readers participated in the vote.

The Biodiversity Forum was created in June 2009; and in just one year of operation it has carried out nearly 10 temporary exhibitions that have addressed topics ranging from naturalist painting, to the plastic singularity of Huelva’s Río Tinto, through the biological and cultural diversity of the continents, astronomical photography, the sustainability of water as a natural resource or the jungles of Brazil, Mexico, Equatorial Guinea and China. It also has two permanent rooms where you can observe the cameras connected live to the Doñana National Park and the Iberian lynx Captive Breeding Centre. Several conferences, scientific film sessions, research group meetings and presentations of international environmental campaigns such as the “Starlight Initiative” have also been held at its facilities.

Other award-winning projects were, for example, the reintroduction programmes of the Iberian lynx in Cordoba and Portugal; the Bear Patrols in Asturias, which seek data for the management and knowledge of the ecology of the brown bear species; the Sierra Nevada Global Change Observatory in Granada; or the Spanish roe deer association, among others.