International Day for Biological Diversity 2020
22nd May, 2020
Perth NRM was proud to present a special message from Professor Kingsley Dixon for the International Day for Biological Diversity, Friday 22 May, 2020.
The theme for the International Day for Biological Diversity in 2020 is ‘Our Solutions Are In Nature’.
Awarded the WA Scientist of the Year in 2016, Professor Dixon has been at the forefront of Western Australia’s scientific conservation efforts for decades. This month, he has released the second edition of Coastal Plants – A Guide to the Identification and Restoration of Plants of the Greater Perth Coast.
He graciously agreed to record this message from inside a banksia woodland, where he is demonstrating the ‘solutions in nature’ principle, working with soil health and fungus to reintroduce an endangered orchid.
Because of course that’s what he was doing.
Hello everyone,I’m Professor Kingsley Dixon from Curtin University, and I’m speaking about the International Day for Biological Diversity – and it’s appropriate that here I am, just on sunset, in our nationally threatened Banksia woodland.
I was raised as a child in exactly this bushland, and I played, and looked at all the bugs, and the orchids, and the banksias in this woodland.
Sadly we’ve removed so much from the biological hotspot of Southwestern Australia that it got listed as a Threatened Ecological Community just two years ago.
But on a day like this it’s important for us to reflect that we can all make a change.
And today, by listing this bushland, by all the volunteer groups that are working to protect it, we’re doing more to save our biological diversity from being eroded any further.
So this day is really special for all Western Australians, so that this hotspot that we have been graced with, which is rich and diverse like no other on the planet, will be here for future generations.
Enjoy the day, think of the future, and do your little bit to keep this hotspot forever.
Thank you.
Thank you, Professor Kingsley Dixon.