Sir David Attenborough pays a visit to the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI) conservation campus

Sir David Attenborough visited the building that bears his name as he caught up with the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI), of which he is honorary patron.

The veteran broadcaster said he felt “an undercurrent of joy” whenever he came to the CCI conservation campus, which is housed in the Sir David Attenborough building on Pembroke Street.

The campus was opened in 2016 and is the first of its kind, with more than 500 conservation professionals and researchers from 10 different organisations and the University of Cambridge.

During his visit, on Monday, 23 September, for which he was accompanied by his daughter Susan, Sir David enjoyed the art installations throughout the building.

These installations are the outcome of residencies involving painters, photographers, and performers in landscapes throughout the world.

Sir David also spoke with experts from across the partnership about the results being achieved through the innovative collaboration projects that are being undertaken across the CCI.

Melissa Leach, executive director of CCI, said of the visit: “Sir David has been an inspiration to so many of us here at CCI and it was an absolute privilege to discuss the detail of our work with him.

“He has such a deep appreciation of the species, environments and communities with which we work.”

During the visit, Sir David learnt how, through collaboration, enormous banks of data sets can be drawn upon and compared to provide the evidence and insight needed to inform decisions made by teams working on the ground to protect and restore the natural world.

This data is gathered through the IUCN Red List team based on the campus and the UNEP-WCMC supported Protected Planet Index, as well as many others.

Adham Ashton-Butt, senior research ecologist at BTO, who has previously been involved in the CCI Knowledge Exchange Studentships, shared details of his work using acoustics to help restoration and rewilding projects monitor their impacts on biodiversity and the key role that citizen scientists can play in this work.

Adham said: “Sir David was very interested in the cutting-edge AI techniques we use to automate identification of birds, bats, small mammals and insects.

“He himself has been pioneering in the use of new technologies for his television programmes and so I think the work we are doing across CCI really resonates with him.”

Sir David has a deep-rooted belief in the power of collaboration and has previously described CCI as “an extraordinary marriage between outstanding practical conservationists and inspiring intellectual thinkers which will shape the future of life on Earth”.

He was interested to hear how CCI embeds an ethos of collaboration which reaches far beyond the 11 CCI partners, with projects such as one of this year’s Earthshot Prize finalists, the Altyn Dala Conservation Initiative, being delivered by RSPB together with a group of other organisations working in the Kazakh Steppe region.

Kathy Gill, chair of the Cambridge Conservation Forum (CCF), also highlighted the results being achieved by more than 70 conservation organisations based in the Cambridge who form part of the CCF network.

Sir David’s connection to Cambridge runs deep and he has returned a great many times since he first enrolled at the University in 1945, working to support each of the CCI partners in many different ways.

CCI says it is honoured to have such an “engaged and inspirational” honorary patron as Sir David.