Biodiversity Research Institute
To celebrate BRI’s 25 anniversary, we launched a new quarterly e-zine we titled One Drop of Water. This new platform features stories about our science, our scientists, and the critical intersection where science informs policy.
The March issue is out now! In addition, we will share monthly insights from our very own poet in residence, Jeff Fair, who contributes a column called Field Notes from a Backcountry Biologist.
Who We Are
Who We Are
Biodiversity Research Institute (BRI), headquartered in Portland, Maine, is a nonprofit 501(c)3 ecological research group whose mission is to assess emerging threats to wildlife and ecosystems through collaborative research. We use scientific findings to advance environmental awareness and inform decision makers.
BRI’s Centers of Research
BRI’s research capabilities have grown in response to pressing ecological issues, from the ability to study the natural history of loons to the development of new technologies that enable researchers to predict risks due to climate change and human development.
News and Features
April 2024
BRI is starting the second year in a row conducting biodiversity surveys for the Kajiado Rangelands Carbon Project (KRCP) in Southern Kenya. This year, more staff have have added with greater expertise on vegetation, dung beetle, and grasshopper identification – three key indicators of this project that focus on making changes in livestock grazing management practices to remove carbon from the air and put it in the soil. BRI staff will be working with local taxonomic experts and staff from our partner organizations, Soils for the Future Africa and CarbnSolve.
February 2024
CarbonSolve, a partner of BRI and a leading global developer of rangeland carbon credits, announces the results of a long-term study that presents the first evidence that improved grazing practices implemented at the scale of traditional pastoralist migrations can remove a significant volume of greenhouse gases to soil carbon. This study, conducted by a team of scientists from various universities & organizations in the United States, Kenya, and Tanzania, was performed across more than two million hectares of rangeland in Northern Kenya. Read the full press release here.December 2023
A new Newsweek article, “Storing Carbon in Kenya’s Soil Could Help Herders and Save the Planet” details the ongoing work of two BRI partners, Soils for the Future Africa and CarbonSolve to implement a 10 year soil carbon pilot project. The project has already succeeded in sequestering 8.5 million tons of carbon dioxide over eight years—roughly the equivalent of the annual emissions of more than 1.8 million cars in the U.S. Read the article here.October 2023
BRI announces the publication of a series of multiyear research studies that assessed the global impact of mercury on air, water, fish, and wildlife in a two-part special issue of Ecotoxicology, an international scientific journal devoted to presenting critical research on the effects of toxic chemicals on populations, communities, and terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems. An esteemed group of 193 scientists from more than 30 countries collaborated on producing 19 peer-reviewed papers that form a Special Issue of Ecotoxicology titled Assessing Global Environmental Mercury Exposure in Biota and Potential Impacts on Biodiversity. Read more here.
October 2023
In January 2023, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) released a draft call area for the siting of offshore wind development in the Gulf of Maine. In response to the draft call area, the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIFW) and the Maine Governor’s Energy Office submitted a comment to BOEM highlighting the importance of coastal foraging habitat for nesting marine birds, particularly in nearshore shallow regions around banks and ledges, based on the results of this desktop analysis conducted by the BRI. This analysis included multiple developed layers based on recommendations from MDIFW, integrated analyses of risk and vulnerability, and core habitat use determined from seabird telemetry tracking. Read the report here.
United Nations and BRI
BRI helps over 40 countries meet requirements for the Minamata Convention on Mercury by assisting with Minamata Initial Assessments and mercury inventories, reducing mercury use in artisanal and small-scale gold mining practices, and evaluating effectiveness through mercury biomonitoring.
BRI is an official member of the UN Global Compact and an accredited observer organization for both the Minamata Convention and the Convention on Biological Diversity, as well as an Executing Agency for UNEP.
