Discover the astonishing journey of the Beijing Swift, spanning from Beijing to Africa and back, a tale of resilience and wonder. Through this remarkable story, learn how even urban environments hold the key to preserving biodiversity. Join me as we uncover the power of small actions in shaping a brighter future for our planet.#earthdayTerry Townshend is a Beijing-based biodiversity and climate change expert with specific expertise on legislation, wildlife conservation and China. Formerly lead author and co-author of the annual Climate Legislation Study, in partnership with the London School of Economics, he presented the findings in the US Senate, Chinese National Peoples Congress, Japanese Diet, South Korean National Assembly, Mexican Congress and the UK Parliament. In 2017, in partnership with Chinese NGO ShanShui Conservation Center, he helped devise and set up a community-based wildlife watching tourism project with yak herders on the Tibetan Plateau, focusing on Snow Leopards. The herders were awarded the first community-based tourism concession for a National Park in China, informing policy development for China's national park system.Terry is passionate about public engagement on biodiversity and set up projects to track two of Beijing's most iconic birds - the Beijing Swift + Beijing Cuckoo - both of which werediscovered migrate to southern Africa for the northern winter, attracting media coverage including front page of the New York Times. He runs the Wild Beijing website (www.wild-beijing .org), celebrating the wildlife of China's capital city. In 2018 he became a Fellow of the Paulson Institute, advising their conservation programme, and in 2019 was invited by the Beijing Municipal government to be a consultant on a project to protect and restore Beijing's biodiversity. In 2020 he was co-author of a landmark study on how to finance biodiversity conservation: “Financing Nature: Closing the Global Biodiversity Financing Gap”, influencing the resource mobilisation aspects of the new Global Biodiversity Framework, agreed by more than 190 countries under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal in December 2021.Terry has a prominent media profile, appearing on prime time TV in China with CCTV, BTV and Phoenix TV, featured live on BBC World and worked with the BBC Natural History Unit and ITV's Ray Mears in Qinghai and Beijing, as well as National Geographic. He is a Fellow of the International League of Conservation Writers and, in 2021, was awarded a gold Beijing Citizen Award by 新京报 (Beijing News) for services to the environment, the first foreign recipient in its history.This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx