CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, has officially opened a state-of-the-art facility in Canberra to safeguard more than 13 million irreplaceable biodiversity specimens and support vital research to better understand and manage the natural environment.
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.
The $90 million building was jointly funded by CSIRO and the Department of Education through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS).
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's Chief Executive, Dr Doug Hilton, said the new facility would support researchers, government and industry to better-monitor our environment, pests and weeds, to protect endangered species, prevent disease, and harness nature sustainably.
"For more than a century, our collections have quietly underpinned Australian science, policy, agriculture, biosecurity, and biodiversity conservation," Dr Hilton said.
"They are a hidden powerhouse, supporting everything from tracking pest incursions to discovering new species and understanding the genetic diversity of Australia's native ecosystems.
"This work contributes directly to the national interest. It informs biosecurity actions, climate resilience strategies, and land management activities. It helps us answer one of the most pressing questions of our time: How do we protect biodiversity in a changing world?"
The building was named Diversity in recognition of Australia's rich biodiversity represented within the national collections.
The new genomics laboratories and digitisation facilities will allow scientists to extract and share more information from research specimens than ever before, connecting physical collections with digital platforms, from DNA sequences to high-resolution images.
The facility makes the collections accessible to researchers, governments, and citizen scientists worldwide.
Toni Moate, CSIRO's Director for National Collections and Marine Infrastructure said Diversity was the newest purpose-built collections facility in the world.
"Our research teams here keep finding new ways to use our biological collections to create a better future for Australians – from using spider wasp venoms to source new pharmaceuticals, all the way through to using historic reptile collections to track how animals respond to climate change," Ms Moate said.
"This new facility will only accelerate this incredible work and enable us to move into new areas of research."
Dr Clare Holleley, Director of CSIRO's Australian National Wildlife Collection, said nature is declining globally at a rate unprecedented in human history and these biodiversity collections serve 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."
Architecture firm Hassell designed the building in close consultation with collections researchers and engineers over 10 months to ensure the design would enhance scientific capability and capacity, and preserve the delicate specimens for decades to come.
Construction began in autumn 2022 and was completed just over two years later, while relocating the 13 million specimens to their new home took around a year.
Unlike museums, Diversity is a research facility and is therefore not open to the public. It is, however, visited by scientists and collaborators from around the world.
Learn more about and the collections it houses: the Australian National Wildlife Collection and the Australian National Insect Collection .
Fast facts:
Diversity brings together the Australian National Wildlife Collection and the Australian National Insect Collection under one roof. The vaults contain:
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 7 million beetles.
