Five-Year Goals Established
At the beginning of the year, the All Species Foundation established a clear set of five-year milestones distilled from conversations that took place during two key conferences in the fall of 2001 - the Megadiversity Workshop in Mexico City and the Summit for All Species in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Conference participants were asked for suggestions and through an active list serve discussion, these ideas were heatedly discussed. Some additions and changes were made, and the goals were finalized in late January.

The five-year goals are:

1. Complete one comprehensive ATBI (All-Taxa Biodiversity Inventory)
2. Quadruple the rate of species description (for multi-cellular organisms)
3. Image 50% of the holotypes for the Web (described multi-cellular organisms)
4. Increase by twofold the taxonomic capacity of developing nations

All Species Toolkit Search Engine
A fourfold increase in the rate of species description will be facilitated by the Species Toolkit, currently in development. Through the All Species Toolkit Search Engine, there will be a virtual central index for species information, which will greatly accelerate the species description process.

The first phase of the Species Toolkit Project, a species search engine, was completed on schedule on March 31st. As a result, we now have more than 1 million entries, each name linked to the databases which contain information about that specific species.

Strategic Partnerships
In February, the All Species Foundation signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Hawaii Biological Survey with the mutual goal to complete the description and name of all multi-cellular organisms in the Hawaiian Islands within five years - called All Species Hawaii.

All Species also entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) as a new Participating Member.