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Facility safeguards 13 million irreplaceable specimens

Sep 3, 2025

Beetle drawer at the Diversity building, part of the Australian National Insect Collection.

CSIRO has officially opened a new facility in Canberra to safeguard more than 13 million irreplaceable biodiversity specimens and support research to better understand and manage the natural environment.

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Named Diversity, the new building features robust, temperature-controlled vaults that are bushfire- and pest-resistant, designed to preserve specimens — from insects to wildlife — for future generations, while advancing scientific discovery.

It brings together the Australian National Wildlife Collection and Australian National Insect Collection — collected over 150 years — supported by cutting-edge laboratories and research infrastructure.

CSIRO Australian national wildlife collection director Clare Holleley in the Australian National Wildlife Collection. Photo: Merinda Campbell.

CSIRO Australian national wildlife collection director Clare Holleley said nature was declining globally at a rate unprecedented in human history, and these biodiversity collections served as a library of life on Earth and a resource for caring for the environment.

“The potential held within our biological collections is huge and, through this facility, we’re changing the way they are used and shared,” Dr Holleley said.

“Collection specimens allow us to better-understand long-term trends in environmental response and to help prepare species for the challenges of the future.

“In this new building, we’re solving the problems that nature presents to us in real time.

“Our researchers are often the very first people in the world to see a particular specimen, sequence a gene or put together pieces of the puzzle in a way never been done before — it’s incredibly rewarding.”

Quick facts

55,000 birds, representing about 99 per cent of Australian bird species — the most comprehensive collection of Australian and Papua New Guinean birds in the Southern Hemisphere.
17,000 orchids preserved in ethanol.
31,000 historical egg clutches from more than 1000 bird species.
37,000 tissue samples from more than 23,000 individual bird specimens, making it the world’s largest cryo-frozen tissue bank of Australian birds and one of the most significant collections of cryo-frozen Papua New Guinean bird tissues.
The world’s largest collection of Australian insects and related invertebrates totalling over 12 million specimens, including 2.4 million moths and butterflies and more than seven million beetles.