RECOGNISING that biodiversity is an essential component of natural ecosystems and contributes important ecosystem services to people including adequate carbon storage, seed dispersal, pollination, soil integrity and fertility, and food, among others;

CONCERNED that, according to the latest Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) report, “around 1 million flora and fauna species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades, more than ever before in human history”;

RECOGNISING that the greatness of science lies not only in the process of its discovery, but also in capacity and willingness to make data and information selflessly available;

NOTING that the collection of in situ biodiversity data has dramatically increased in the last decade due to the popularisation of passive automatic data collection sensors such as camera traps, sound recorders, drones and biodiversity eDNA collection devices;

RECOGNISING the importance of biodiversity data generated by public administrations (or on their behalf) for the implementation and monitoring of policies and the efforts of these administrations to disseminate such data in interoperable formats;

CONCERNED that, despite a large amount of in situ biodiversity data being collected with these new technologies, most of these data are not shared or used in conservation due to the lack of standards for data sharing, technical capacity to process and analyse them, adequate tools for data management, and trusted data repositories available at local to global scales;

AWARE that in order to manage biodiversity in an adequate and transparent manner, conservation managers and policy makers need data on wildlife populations that are current (real-time or near-real-time), primary (in their original form), geographically representative (covering most of the spatial distribution of a species), with the appropriate temporal resolution (sampling intervals of at least 10% of the estimated generation range of a species), and are readily available to the conservation, science and public community at large;

NOTING that this information is essential for the development of knowledge and management products required to measure progress and set concrete targets towards the conservation of biodiversity at local, national, regional and global scales;

RECOGNISING the role of the network of experts organised under the IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC) and the Red List Unit of the Secretariat for the delivery of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species;

ALSO RECOGNISING the role of national biodiversity commissions, research centres and institutes, and other regional, national, and subnational organisations devoted to gathering, storing, organising, processing, and communicating in situ biodiversity data and associated information, and the contribution of global biodiversity data clearinghouses; and

MINDFUL and WELCOMING of the emergence of various wildlife and biodiversity in situ data-sharing platforms such as Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), eBird, iNaturalist, eMammal and Wildlife Insights among others;