Biodiversity Research Institute

To celebrate BRI’s 25 anniversary, we launched a new bi-monthly 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 June/July 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.

Meet the Team
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News and Features

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 2023BRI 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.

October 2023

BRI staff are part of a project team on an upcoming NOAA Restore funded project investigating ways to manage coastal bird populations in the Gulf of Mexico. NOAA recently awarded $16.8 million to 32 organizations working across 10 projects to conduct collaborative ecosystem science research that will be used by natural resource managers in the Gulf. The project, Evaluating efficacy of stewardship actions for vulnerable Gulf of Mexico coastal birds through co-production between scientists and resource managers, will see the project team will develop science-based guidance on environmental stewardship techniques for the Gulf of Mexico, which will help resource managers reduce threats from human disturbance to coastal-breeding bird populations. Learn more 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.