The All Species Foundation aimed to catalog all species on Earth by 2025. It began in 2001 as a spinoff of the Long Now Foundation.
The Foundation started with a large grant from the Schlinger Foundation but because of the stock market crash of 2000, at least in part, it was unable to attract appreciable additional funding.
The All Species Foundation received some criticism over the goal of identifying literally all species on earth. The criticism was that in reality species often have indistinct boundaries so that it is often not possible to objectively decide when there is a single species or multiple species.
Famous quotes containing the words species and/or foundation:
“Heaven and hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad. But the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“But in every constitution some large degree of animal vigor is necessary as material foundation for the higher qualities of the art.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)