Plans for a $100 million internet-based encyclopaedia have been unveiled by scientists, with all 1.8 million known animal and plant life to be listed.After being launched with two initial grants of $12.5 million, the ten-year project will enable users to look up information, maps, videos and pictures of all the animals, plants and fungi known to man for free.
James Edwards, the executive director of the project, told Reuters that the Encyclopaedia of Life planned to create an entry for every named species.
Project chairman Jesse Ausubel, who works at Rockefeller University in New York, added: "This is about giving access to information to everyone."
It will originally be produced in English, with other language translations to follow, drawing on existing databases for mammals, fishes, amphibians, plants and birds.
Mr Edwards also suggested that there might be eight to ten million species on the planet and new ones identified will be added accordingly.
Around 25 to 30 people will run the site, which it is hoped will provide support for a range of people, from environmentalists and governments, children using it for education purposes and ordinary web users who use search engines to search for information across the web.
The site makers will be hoping the project proves as successful as the popular multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopaedia Wikipedia.
Wikipedia's popularity has grown significantly in recent years, with Alexa's top 500 websites ranking the site tenth in the world in terms of visitors.
