Lecture Introduction：

Globally, biodiversity is in freefall, with the populations of monitored vertebrates having fallen by an average of 73% since 1970 and an extinction rate that is thought to be up to 1,000 times the natural rate. This crisis is not only sad but also presents tremendous risks to us as humans - in terms of economics and public health. This lecture will show how the key to reversing this trend is in awareness, with examples of how everyone can make a difference.

Speaker Biography：

Terry Townshend is an internationally renowned wildlife conservationist. He is passionate about public engagement on biodiversity and helped to set up projects to track the migration of two of Beijing’s most iconic birds - the Beijing Swift and the Beijing Cuckoo - both of which we discovered migrate to southern Africa for the northern winter, attracting media coverage including front page of the New York Times. In 2017, in partnership with Chinese NGO, ShanShui Conservation Center, he helped to devise and set up a community-based wildlife watching tourism project with yak herders on the Tibetan Plateau, focusing on snow leopards. The herders were awarded the first community-based tourism concession for a National Park in China, informing policy development for China’s National Park system. He runs the Wild Beijing website, celebrating the birds and wildlife of China’s capital city. In 2018 he became a Fellow of the Paulson Institute, advising their conservation programme, and in 2019 he was invited by the Beijing Municipal Government to be a consultant on a project to protect and restore Beijing’s biodiversity. He has a prominent media profile, appearing on prime time TV in China with CCTV, BTV and Phoenix TV, featured live on BBC World and worked with the BBC Natural History Unit and ITV’s Ray Mears in Qinghai and Beijing, as well as National Geographic. He serves on the Global Advisory Group of BirdLife International and is a Fellow of the League of Conservation Writers. In 2021 he was awarded a gold Beijing Citizen Award by Beijing News for services to the environment, the first foreign recipient in its history. In 2025 he became a TEDx speaker on biodiversity in Shanghai.