Our Speakers

Author, Comedian, Birdman

Sean is a writer, conservationist and birdwatcher. He is currently editor of Australian Birdlife magazine, author of “The Big Twitch” as well as former holder of the Australian Big Year twitching record. Sean's writing about birds is driven by his desire to connect people with nature and proudly lists his role in a small team that saved the Norfolk Island Green Parrot from extinction as a career highlight. Sean nominates Lamington National Park as the most beautiful rainforest in Australia and his ideal spot for birdwatching.

Founder and past president of Big Scrub Landcare 

Tony is one of Australia’s foremost conservation leaders, having co-founded and been active in conservation groups for over 30 years. In 2019, he was awarded an Order of Australia (AO) for distinguished service to the environment through the restoration of endangered rainforest in northern New South Wales. 

In 1993, he was the founder of Big Scrub Landcare, and was President until this year. Tony is a recipient of the NSW Individual Landcarer of the Year Award and the prestigious Australian Minister for the Environment’s Banksia Award for Community Environmental Leadership. He is also founder and Executive Chairman of Big Scrub Foundation.

Tony began his career in the business world and has a PhD in organic chemistry. Today, Tony continues his conservation work, spearheading Big Scrub Rainforest Conservancy’s Science Saving Rainforests Program and continuing to restore over 14ha of rainforest on his family’s farm in Bangalow.

Research Centre of Ecosystem Resilience  

Maurizio heads the new Research Centre of Ecosystem Resilience within the Botanic Garden of Sydney. His research team currently includes 16 scientists (and multiple post-grad students) that integrate and incorporate molecular ecology, basic ecology, environmental modelling, machine learning and other innovative approaches within their studies. His research focuses on answering fundamental landscape-level evolutionary ecology questions, as well as supporting the development of on-ground conservation and management strategies. Maurizio has a long-standing interest in rainforest vegetation, but his works extends across all native vegetation types. He established a major landscape genomic project, Restore & Renew, that gathers uniformly sampled genomic knowledge infrastructure across multiple species (currently >200). As well as advancing our understanding of species distributional and assembly processes, such knowledge infrastructure supports restoration practices, conservation of threatened species, landscape-level prioritisations, policy development and much more. 

Griffith University   

Carla Catterall is Professor Emeritus in environmental sciences, based at Griffith University, Brisbane. During the past four decades she has worked with colleagues and students to investigate processes of deforestation and reforestation, how plants and animals in the wild respond to these and other environmental changes, and how diverse flora and fauna might be encouraged to persist within landscapes used by people. Carla has led ongoing research over the past 25 years into the ecological processes involved in rainforest restoration, the roles of plant-animal interactions, and the inputs and biodiversity outcomes associated with different techniques. The findings have been published in 160+ scientific publications, plus over 40 other outputs in formats suitable for use by land managers and the wider community. Carla has also taught many University courses in ecology and environmental management, and she has served on many government and community advisory bodies.

Griffith University   

Prof Brendan Mackey is director of the Climate Action Beacon at Griffith University, Queensland. Brendan was a Coordinating Lead Author in the IPCC 6th Assessment Report on impacts, vulnerability and adaptation. Brendan has a PhD in environmental biography from The ANU and has undertaken research into rainforests in Australia, Indonesia, Vanuatu, PNG, Thailand, the Amazon, DRC, Uganda and British Columbia. He has published extensively in the fields of forest ecology, biogeography, climate and ecosystem dynamics, and conservation biology.

Hon. Research Fellow, Macquarie University  

Robert Kooyman (MSc, PhD) is a botanist and ecologist with a focus on evolutionary ecology, paleobotany, and rainforest ecology. For more than 40 years he has lived, worked, and conducted research in the forests and rainforests of Australia, Southeast Asia, South America, Africa and Madagascar. Robert has published more than 50 peer-reviewed scientific articles in high impact journals in the fields of paleobotany, rainforest ecology and biogeography, restoration ecology, and the dynamics of rainforest assembly processes in relation to the spatial structure of genetic diversity and environmental variables. His research has contributed substantially to improving understanding of the origins, ancestry, and assembly of the Australian and Southeast Asian rainforest floras, and he continues to undertake research in rainforests around the world. He is currently a Research Fellow at Macquarie University, a Research Associate with Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney, and a Research Scientist with Missouri Botanic Garden, USA (Africa – Madagascar program).

Dr W.J.F. (Bill) McDonald was employed as a vegetation surveyor and ecologist at Queensland Herbarium for almost 40 years prior to retirement in 2012. He worked in a wide range of ecosystems from semiarid grasslands and Acacia woodlands in central-western Queensland to moist eucalypt forests and rainforests in south-eastern Queensland.

For the past 30 years he has worked mainly in surveying and mapping of rainforest communities in central and southern Queensland, and continues his studies as an Honorary Research Associate with Queensland Herbarium and Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service.

He is the co-author of popular guides to rainforest trees, shrubs and climbers and for many years has been actively involved in field excursions and workshops with natural resource and educational groups.

Hugh and Nan Nicholson first moved to the Northern Rivers area of NSW from Victoria in 1974 where they established the first specialist rainforest nursery in Australia at Terania Creek. They pioneered the propagation and extensive use of rainforest plants in gardens and in reforestation on degraded lands. They ran Terania Rainforest Nursery for almost 20 years before selling it in 1995.

Hugh combined the hunt for seeds for the nursery with a passion for photographing plants in flower and fruit. These photographs became the basis for their rainforest publications, Australian Rainforest Plants I-VI, with Nan writing the botanical text. Nan and Hugh are also collaborators of the interactive key Rainforest Plants of Australia along with Gwen Harden and Bill McDonald. 

The Nicholsons have long been involved in the protection of rainforest through activism, and remain involved in ongoing campaigns to protect the remaining pockets of native forest that are still under threat. Nan and Hugh are also concerned with numerous other conservation issues and with human rights. 10% of the income from the publishing business are donated to conservation and social justice causes.

Oli is a Bundjalung man from the Northern Rivers and is the Executive Director of Jagun Alliance and the Conservation Futures project co-manager at Bush Heritage Australia. Oli grew up in footprints of Big Scrub Country and has been actively engaged in Caring for Country and empowering First Nation communities for the past 15 years. He believes strongly in the role of Aboriginal culture as a keystone to maintaining livelihoods, supporting identity, connection to Country and enabling healthy and regenerative communities to care for Country. Oli started the Firesticks Initiative and was a founding Director of both the Jagun Alliance Aboriginal Corporation and Firesticks Alliance Indigenous Corporation. He is also a board director of the Natural Hazards Research Australia, National Koala Recovery Board and Northern Rivers Fire and Biodiversity Consortium. Oli is a key independent advisor to the NSW Bushfire and Natural Hazards Research Centre, the National Indigenous Australians Agency Indigenous Rangers Independent Reference Group and the NSW Independent Koala Expert Panel along with several other projects and organisations. Oli holds a Bachelor of Arts in Adult Education and Community Management from the University of Technology, Sydney. Oli works to support a range of research, policy, advocacy, education and on ground projects. He is passionate about Aboriginal leadership, empowerment, partnerships and recognition of cultural knowledge and practice.