Conservation biology is a relatively new, multidisciplinary science, developed in response to the biological diversity crisis, which endeavours to evaluate the impact of human activities on biological diversity and to design corrective measures. Drawing on the results of population biology, evolutionary science, ecology and ethology, conservation biology generates methodologies specifically adapted to the analysis and attenuation of extinction risks of threatened species and populations on the one hand, to the detection and reversal of the degradation, simplification, regression or fragmentation of communities of plants and animals, on the other hand. The Conservation Biology Section of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences has developed activities along both of these main axes.

In the domain of threatened species, research and studies are related mainly to the detection of species and populations at risk, their evolutionary history, biogeography, eco-ethology and trends, to the prediction of the dynamics and extinction risks of small populations, to the development of data collection methodologies adapted to vulnerable species, in particular, individual marking, identification and monitoring techniques, to the design and implementation of restoration programmes.

In the domain of ecosystems, projects focus mainly on the identification, evaluation and demarcation of areas of biological interest, on the definition of selection criteria for protected areas and of adequacy requirements for networks of protected areas, on the design of habitat typologies and catalogues, on the identification of constraints and threats, on the principles of habitat management and their application to complex sites, on the methodologies of trend evaluation, biological indicators and environmental impact studies.

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The site is organised into four parts, detailed below. Each of them offers access to reference documents, data bases and original contributions, usually presented only in the language in which they were created. Interconnecting links and multiple pathways to these documents are provided.