"An undercurrent of joy" - Sir David’s response to visiting the CCI Conservation Campus

Sir David said of visiting CCI that he felt ‘an undercurrent of joy’ whenever he came to the CCI conservation campus, which is housed in the building bearing his own name. The campus was opened in 2016 and is the first of its kind, with over 500 conservation professionals and researchers from ten different organisations and the University of Cambridge all collaborating to stop the biodiversity crisis and build more hopeful futures for people and nature.

During his visit, for which he was accompanied by his daughter Susan, Sir David engaged passionately with the art installations throughout the building – the outcome of residencies involving painters, photographers, and performers in landscapes throughout the world – and spoke with experts from across the partnership about the ground-breaking results that are being achieved through the innovative collaboration projects that are being undertaken across the CCI.

Melissa Leach, Executive Director of CCI said of the visit ‘Sir David has been an inspiration to so many of us here at CCI and it was an absolute privilege to discuss the detail of our work with him. He has such a deep appreciation of the species, environments and communities with which we work.’

Emergent themes discussed included the power of the collective use of insight and evidence, the value of collaborative input into an array of complementary training and leadership programmes, the impact of joined up story telling including through the arts, and the importance of hope.

And there was a lot to be hopeful about. Sir David learnt how, through collaboration, enormous banks of data sets can be drawn upon and compared to provide the evidence and insight needed to inform decisions made by teams working on the ground to protect and restore the natural world; data that is gathered through the IUCN Red List team based on the campus, and the UNEP-WCMC supported Protected Planet Index, as well as many others. Craig Hilton Taylor, Head of Red List Unit, shared that the team have recently surpassed a major, long-standing milestone target. Martin Harper, CEO of Birdlife International, added that through insight gathered from the Key Biodiversity Areas (KBA) partnership they have now identified more than 16,500 sites which are driving conservation effort around the world.

Sarah Vincent, Director of Communications at TRAFFIC shared with Sir David a story about her recent filming trip to Tanzania where forest rangers and citizens, using a simple timber tracker device, have helped stop illegal timber trade and improve forest management so that dried up forest streams are flowing once again, and wild animals are returning.

She said, “As someone who seeks to create meaningful change through storytelling, it was such an honour to meet with arguably the greatest nature storyteller of all time.”

Adham Ashton-Butt, Senior Research Ecologist at BTO, who has previously been involved in the CCI Knowledge Exchange Studentships, shared details of his work using acoustics to help restoration and rewilding projects monitor their impacts on biodiversity and the key role that citizen scientists can play in this work.

Adham said: ‘Sir David was very interested in the cutting-edge AI techniques we use to automate identification of birds, bats, small mammals and insects. He himself has been pioneering in the use of new technologies for his television programmes and so I think the work we are doing across CCI really resonates with him.’

Much of the work being undertaken by the CCI partners benefits places Sir David has filmed over the course of his industrious career. One such place is the Gola rainforest in Sierra Leone, the location of Sir David’s first ever nature programme, Zoo Quest, in 1955. Jo Gilbert, International Director at RSPB, updated Sir David on RSPB’s work in the area in collaboration with the Conservation Society of Sierra Leone and local and international researchers, sharing successes in the areas of climate change mitigation, protecting biodiversity, and community development in what is now a flagship national park. The project benefited from early support from the CCI Collaborative Fund for Conservation granted in 2010.

CCI’s unique position to enable the next generation of conservation leaders did not get overlooked either. Bhaskar Vira, Pro-VC Sustainability & Education, University of Cambridge, Annette Green a Cambridge post-doc researcher, Rosie Trevelyan, Director of the Tropical Biology Association (TBA) and Marianne Carter, Director, Conservation Capacity & Leadership at Fauna & Flora all spoke to Sir David about the impact of their programmes in this area.

TBA are supporting a new generation of citizen scientists in Africa, a project that has been born out of a CCI collaboration and Marianne spoke about impact being achieved by the Conservation Leadership Programme, delivered together with other CCI partners Birdlife International and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). The programme celebrates its 40th anniversary next year.

Sir David has a deep-rooted belief in the power of collaboration and has previously described CCI as ‘an extraordinary marriage between outstanding practical conservationists and inspiring intellectual thinkers which will shape the future of life on Earth.’ He was interested to hear how CCI embeds an ethos of collaboration which reaches far beyond the eleven CCI partners, with projects such as one of this year’s Earthshot Prize finalists, the Altyn Dala Conservation Initiative, being delivered by RSPB together with a group of other organisations working in the Kazakh Steppe region. Kathy Gill, Chair of the Cambridge Conservation Forum (CCF) also highlighted the results being achieved by more than 70 conservation organisations based in the Cambridge who form part of the CCF network.

Whilst Sir David remarks on the joy he experiences when visiting the CCI conservation campus, it is impossible not to see the joy that his visits bring to those working there. His connection to Cambridge runs deep and he has returned a great many times since he first enrolled at the University in 1945, working to support each of the CCI partners in many different ways. CCI is honoured to have such an engaged and inspirational honorary patron.