As a Leibniz Institute for terrestrial biodiversity, the Museum Koenig has extended its research in the area of Systematic Zoology by important tasks around the global biodiversity crisis. Through this approach, the Museum Koenig staff provides an important contribution towards the protection of the biological resources on Earth, because our results are made available to the scientific community and are discussed worldwide. These scientific results contribute to the properly competent economical and political decisions aimed at safeguarding the basis of human life. With this spectrum of tasks, the Museum Koenig does a highly topical and future-oriented research. At the same time it holds an important position within the frame of many and diverse co-operations on international efforts to preserve the biodiversity on Earth.
The Museum Koenig is a member of the Leibniz community (WGL). This community is a union of scientifically, judicially, and economically independent research and service institutions which are as non-university institutions of national interest and are therefore funded at an individually fixed proportion by the federal government.
The Museum Koenig and 19 other institutions are the section "Life Sciences" within the WGL. Five of these institutions agreed in co-operating in the filed of biodiversity research. These are:
- Deutsches Primatenzentrum, Göttingen
- Deutsche Sammlung von Mikroorganismen und Zellkulturen, Braunschweig
- Institut für Zoo- und Wildtierforschung im Forschungsverbund, Berlin
- Forschungsinstitut und Naturmuseum Senckenberg der senckenbergischen naturforschenden Gesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main
- Zoologisches Forschungsmuseum Alexander Koenig, Bonn.
These institutions aim at contributing to meet the permanently increasing demands for detailed information on the composition and the function of the biosphere as a basis for political and economical decisions.
In 1992 - in the frame of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) at Rio de Janeiro - the Federal Republic of Germany has committed itself to participate in the investigation and the preservation of the biosphere. Scientific expertise guarantees the strengths of the Leibniz institutions, which are - due to their outstanding knowledge - highly competent to analyse complex fields of research.
