NatureServe is an international nonprofit biodiversity data and science organization, founded in 1974 and headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. NatureServe is the authoritative source for scientific information about rare and endangered species and ecosystems in North America, and operates a network of more than 60 member programs in the United States, Canada, and Latin America.
NatureServe’s scientists track more than 100,000 species and 7,000 ecosystem types, providing the biodiversity intelligence used by NGOs, federal and state agencies, and businesses to guide conservation decisions. The organization maintains the NatureServe Explorer database, develops the U.S. National Vegetation Classification standard in partnership with the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Forest Service, and has recently launched InSite, a tool that provides site-level biodiversity intelligence for any location in the contiguous United States.
NatureServe’s 50-year record of providing the underlying science for Red List assessments and for protected-area decisions in the Western Hemisphere makes it a key IUCN collaborator. The organization’s leadership in standardizing ecosystem classification and in tracking more than 22% of native North American pollinators as at elevated extinction risk has made it a central node in the U.S. biodiversity data infrastructure.
