Perhaps, for once, there is no need for numbers and data. It would be enough to take a behind-the-scenes tour of the museums that hold natural history collections (many of which are our members) to note the quantitative decline of the taxonomic profession. The number of taxonomists has been decreasing for decades. The profession no longer attracts new talent. Reduced funding for museums has led to restrictive economic choices, affecting first the taxonomic profession, including classifying and cataloguing the animal, plant and mineral world. More taxonomists are needed to keep up with the pace of discoveries. Thousands of specimens lie in museum storerooms, waiting to be catalogued, which probably no human being will ever have the strength or time to do. Slowly, new technologies for automatic (or semi-automatic) species recognition are being tested. These technologies may offer first aid but can only be used properly if trained people are involved. That’s right: training new professionals becomes a key aspect of the fight against biodiversity loss. For years CETAF has understood this and has been investing in this direction. It has learned this through daily exchange with its members and specific assessment projects such as the Red List of Taxonomists, in which the gap between the needs and human resources among expert insect taxonomists has been exposed and clarified in figures. CETAF strongly promotes training: first with CETAF DEST, our portal for disseminating training courses. Then with specific projects: the ‘’T’’ in TETTRIs, for example, stands for Training, both of professional taxonomists and citizen scientists, that serves and will serve to integrate the new workforce in the field. It is clear that stopping the loss of biodiversity will only come through knowledge of what we are losing and what we have left to save. So, it’s time to roll up our sleeves and work to protect biodiversity.
In the article below, Dr. Dashen Liu, explains how education is crucial for biodiversity conservation in the next decades and how the Kunming-Montreal Fund should allocate part of its resources for training.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03072-3
