Hosted by seven organizations, headed by Biodiversity Committee, Chinese Academy of Sciences (BC-CAS), supported by College of Life Science, CAS and Huairou Eco-Environmental Observatory, CAS, the 12th National Conference on Biodiversity Science and Conservation was held in Huairou, Beijing, China from10-12 October, 2016.

Chaired by Prof. Keping Ma, Vice Chair and Secretary General of BC-CAS, Qing Yan, Director General of Bureau of Science & Technology for Development CAS, Fenmin Yan, Deputy Director General of Department of Nature and Ecology Conservation of Ministry of Environment Protection, Academician Qi Zhou and Vice-President of University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS) delivered opening addresses. The workshop was attended by more than 400 participants from 28 provinces, cities and autonomous regions. 

Eight plenary presentations were given by academicians Deyuan Hong, Bojie Fu and Fu Gao, Profs. Hiroyoshi Higuchi, Ding Wang, Rui Yang, Keping Ma and Yongfei Bai. These plenary presentations were brilliant and highly evaluated. Fourteen sessions, 123 oral presentations and 172 abstracts covered all aspects of the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.

The “Nature Conservation Youth Award” was continued for graduate students to encourage young researchers engaged in biodiversity research. Five winners were selected by the expert group: Pingping Huang from Institute of Oceanology, CAS, Yue Wang from South China Botanical Garden, CAS, Xiangyan Su from Peking University, Yunyun Wang from Institute of Applied Ecology, CAS, Meng Wang from Central China Normal University. They were awarded the certificate of honor and bonuses at the conference.

The National Conference on Biodiversity Science and Conservation started in 1994, and is held every two years. It is the highest-level academic event in the biodiversity area in China and aims to promote the academic research and communication among different fields of biodiversity conservation in China. Several highlights were found at the conference as below: 1). The content of the presentations reflected the good research progress, and the graduate work was independent and excellent; 2). Hot topics such as marine biodiversity and national park attracted many experts and institutions; 3). Hot topics were warmly discussed and spread quickly such as the giant panda’s conservation status was downgraded.

The 12fth National Conference on Biodiversity Science and Conservation was held successfully under the common efforts of all people.