Fifteen years ago this month, on the 3 April 2000 to be exact, the NBN Trust was officially incorporated with Companies House. That means our Network has just passed its fifteenth birthday. In that time it has gained 132 members, and collectively its membership has shared more than 110 million species observations via the NBN Gateway. Members have meticulously collected, verified and curated hundreds of millions more biological records of species and habitats in the UK. And the Secretariat team has worked hard and very successfully over that time to grow the Network into what it has now become.
The NBN Trust can now legally drive in El Salvador and the Northern Mariana Islands of Micronesia. If we were a London bus we would go from Blackwall to Charing Cross and if we were an element we would be phosphorus.
Fifteen years is not close to matching some of our members longevity. For example RSPB is now 126 years old and the BSBI traces its origins back to 1836. Meanwhile the Biological Records Centre and the Rothamsted Insect Survey both reached their 50-year birthdays in 2014. At the other end of the spectrum the Association of Local Environmental Record Centres and the Earthworm Society are both now six and growing.
Our Network may be young but it is one of the largest partnerships working on biodiversity in the UK. When you look across the Network and see the depth of history, expertise and experience amongst NBN members it augers well for the future. Here’s to the next 15 years for the Network and to the next hundred years for its members!
