When Australian Museum boss Kim McKay learnt that Brazil’s flagship museum had burned to the ground in 2018, she wept at the loss of 200 years worth of objects and specimens.

She was not the only one. Directors at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and the Natural History Museum in London were spurred on to begin a global collection audit to reduce the risk of losing irreplaceable information that could help humanity make science-based decisions about its future.