A New Mission. The mission of the E. O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation is to preserve biological diversity in the living environment by inventing and implementing business and educational strategies in the service of conservation.

A New Economic Order. Commerce and conservation can and must be made compatible. The sustainable use of Earth's untapped genetic resources make conservation an economic imperative. Through its international BioEnterprise initiatives such as BioTrust, the Foundation facilitates win/win cooperative agreements that benefit ecosystems, developing economies, wildlife managers, and business. Global market forces, typically thought of as the cause of environmental problems, are now one of the great hopes for the living world.

A New Worldview. Education is crucial. Only an informed electorate can appreciate the value of biodiversity and the magnitude of the perils facing it. Only people who know and care about these issues can bring needed changes in public policy. The Foundation will emphasize the development of hands-on, citizen science programs such as BioBlitz. Our teacher programs will stimulate student-based research in the exploration of biodiversity. Our classroom is the natural world itself; the engagement it promotes is not just intellectual but also tangible and visceral.

A New World of Science. Biodiversity studies, a cornerstone of all of biology, remain poorly funded, but are absolutely critical to our understanding of the natural environment and its value. The Foundation recognizes both the importance of deep expertise in groups of organisms, and the power of new technologies, such as automontaged digital photography, DNA sequencing, and satellite imaging to accelerate the exploration of biodiversity and to integrate the outcomes of that exploration with the rest of biology.

E.O. Wilson. The Foundation is guided by the experience and wisdom of E. O. Wilson and is built upon many of the remarkable insights gained from his lifetime in science, education, and environmentalism. The Foundation’s embrace of the full range of approaches to biodiversity -- from hands-on engagement with the natural world to modern biotechnology -- reflects Wilson's own journey from boyhood exploration of Alabama's wildlands to a career at the forefront of science at Harvard University.