Every species has a story. But without a name, that story may never be told. On 23 May, a coalition of Europe’s leading natural history museums, botanical gardens, universities, and research institutions – leads the third annual Taxonomy Recognition Day, a continent-wide call to celebrate taxonomy: the foundational science that names, classifies, and describes the diversity of life on Earth.
A date with meaning
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May 23rd was chosen to mark the birthday of Carl Linnaeus (1707), the Swedish botanist widely regarded as the father of modern taxonomy and the originator of the binomial nomenclature system still in use today. The date also falls the day after the United Nations’ International Day for Biological Diversity, observed on May 22nd. The proximity is deliberate: the premise underpinning Taxonomy Recognition Day is that biodiversity cannot be effectively monitored, managed, or protected without first knowing what species exist and what they are called.
How to get involved
TETTRIs is calling on a wide range of participants to join the #NameItToSaveIt movement – not only on May 23rd, but throughout the year. Suggested activities include:
- Sharing a species of personal or scientific significance on social media, along with its name and the story behind it
- Organising or attending events at natural history museums, botanical gardens, universities, or research institutions
- Using the hashtag #NameItToSaveIt across platforms to contribute to the campaign’s visibility
- Connecting with TETTRIs through official channels for resources, materials, and partnership opportunities
Taxonomy at a critical moment for Europe
The launch of Taxonomy Recognition Day comes at a point when the importance of taxonomic knowledge has never been greater, and the gap between need and capacity has never been more apparent. The 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework commits signatory countries, including EU Member States, to implementing comprehensive biodiversity monitoring programmes by 2030. The European Green Deal, the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, and the Nature Restoration Law all set binding or indicative targets for halting and reversing biodiversity loss, targets that depend on the ability to identify, track, and document species across ecosystems.
Yet the scientific infrastructure required to meet these commitments is under strain. It is estimated that only around 15% of global biodiversity is currently described and documented. More than one million species are threatened with extinction worldwide, many of them still unknown to science. At the same time, the pool of trained taxonomists – the specialists who carry out the work of naming and classifying organisms – is itself declining, with expertise concentrated in a small number of institutions and unevenly distributed across Europe.
As Ana Casino, Technical Coordinator for the TETTRIs project, has noted:
“Taxonomy is more than just naming species – it’s about understanding the ties that bind every living thing on Earth. With species vanishing at an unprecedented rate, the work of taxonomists has never been more urgent. How can you protect something if you don’t know its name?”