Register below to join live webinars from the AWC team in the field.
Scroll down to watch previous conversations.
Instructions for joining the live webinars
James Hewitt / AWC
Chief Operations Officer
As AWC’s Chief Operations Officer, James Hewitt oversees our hard-working operations and land management teams right across Australia. We’ll discuss how new partnerships mean the AWC model is now being applied across 6.5 million hectares. It’s conservation on a grand scale!
Melissa Bruton / AWC
Wildlife Ecologists Dr Karen Young & Dr Rohan Wilson
In the remote Kimberley of north-western Australia, AWC works across 4.3 million hectares (an area as big as Denmark), including AWC sanctuaries and partnership projects. Our team of ecologists has had a year of wide-ranging wildlife surveys and exciting discoveries. Wildlife Ecologists Rohan Wilson and Karen Young will share some of the highlights from 2020.
Watch recordings from Season 3
After several years of drought in western NSW, Scotia Wildlife Sanctuary has finally received some rain in recent months, which has triggered a flurry of wildflowers and birdlife. Wildlife Ecologist Tali Moyle and Sanctuary Manager Hamish Longbottom gave an update from the sanctuary, which is the site of one of AWC’s longest running mammal reintroduction projects.
AWC Wildlife Ecologist Jeanette Kemp is a botanist leading our national effort to catalogue and monitor the huge diversity of plants and vegetation communities that are protected at AWC sanctuaries and partnership projects.
Watch recordings from Season 2
AWC has committed to return the endangered Northern Bettong to the tall eucalypt forests of Mt Zero-Taravale Wildlife Sanctuary in North Queensland. Felicity L’Hotellier is AWC’s Senior Field Ecologist on-site, where this important project is taking shape.
Professor Thomas Lovejoy is one of the world’s most distinguished conservation biologists and a founding member of AWC’s Science Advisory Network. He has worked in the Amazon for over five decades, and popularised the term ‘biological diversity’. Lovejoy is a long-standing part of the AWC family and has visited sanctuaries in the Kimberley, the Top End, Cape York, Central Australia and the Gulf of Carpentaria.
Professor John Woinarski is one of Australia’s pre-eminent conservation biologists, with a career spanning four decades in biodiversity research, policy and management. He co-authored the Action Plan for Australian Mammals which guides much of AWC’s work with threatened mammal species. John joined AWC’s Board of Directors in 2020.
Representing a landmark collaboration between AWC and the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (as part of the NSW Government’s Saving Our Species program), AWC’s work in the Pilliga helps protect a vital piece of habitat for Australia’s threatened species. Already a refuge for a suite of wildlife, the Pilliga project area is now the site of an ambitious reintroduction program of at least six locally extinct mammals. Operations Manager Wayne Sparrow and Acting Regional Ecologist Dr Greg Holland provide an update on the Pilliga Project.
Wendy Harmer is a journalist, comedian, author, producer, and co-host of ABC Radio Sydney’s breakfast program. She joins us to talk about her recent road-trip through outback New South Wales, including a visit to AWC’s Scotia Wildlife Sanctuary.
AWC’s ground-breaking partnership at Bullo River Station is delivering conservation benefits alongside a commercial cattle operation. We hear from owner, Julian Burt, and get an update from AWC Wildlife Ecologist Dr Eridani Mulder who is on the ground conducting surveys there.
AWC has been working at North Head Sanctuary in Sydney since 2009. Viyanna discusses the important Banksia scrub ecosystem protected on the headland, and the three species of small mammals that AWC has reintroduced to the site.
Senior Field Ecologist Helen Crisp is based at Yookamurra Wildlife Sanctuary in South Australia’s Murraylands region. Helen leads the science program at Yookamurra, including looking after important reintroduced populations of Numbats, Bettongs, and Bilbies. She also runs a dedicated wildlife education program which is inspiring the next generation of young conservationists. Helen also shares how during COVID isolation she’s using satellite imagery to monitor the local population of Southern Hairy-nosed Wombats.
Watch recordings from Season 1
Under our partnership with NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, AWC is returning a suite of locally extinct mammals to the mallee country in far south-western NSW. Wildlife Ecologist Dr Laurence Berry provides an update on the Bilbies released there in 2019 and plans for further reintroductions.
Tim Allard is AWC’s Chief Executive and joins us to discuss AWC’s approach to conservation, celebrate some of our recent success stories, and outline our strategy for the future.
AWC leads Australia’s most extensive research into the ecology of feral cats and foxes. Wildlife Ecologist Dr Andrew Carter has led the most recent phase of this research, which has produced a new tool for reliably measuring the population density of cats and foxes in open landscapes.
AWC Chief Scientist John Kanowski joins us to discuss the central role of science in AWC’s conservation model, including Australia’s largest field ecology program which employs over 60 full-time ecologists. We also hear from AWC National Science Manager Dr Liana Joseph about AWC’s contribution to the new National Threatened Species Index for Mammals.
Richard Seaton is a Senior Ecologist who led AWC’s science program in the north-east region for over three years. He has a lifelong passion for birds of prey, and recently authored a book on their identification. Richard joins us to discuss his work and an important research project into one of Australia’s rarest birds of prey, the Red Goshawk.
AWC Wildlife Ecologist, Chantelle Jackson, has spent much of her career working with wildlife in inland Australia, and more recently on AWC sanctuaries in the southwest of Western Australia, including Mt Gibson, Karakamia, Paruna, and Faure Island. Chantelle is now organising an ambitious wildlife translocation, the next step in restoring Central Australia’s biodiversity at Newhaven.
Sally Gray & Graham Woods have managed AWC’s Piccaninny Plains Wildlife Sanctuary on Cape York Peninsula for eight years. During the wet season, they are frequently cut off from the rest of the world for months at a time. They join us to discuss the recent wet season and to offer some wisdom for dealing with social isolation.
Toby Barton is coordinating AWC’s massive prescribed burning program in the Kimberley, working with a team from our remote base at Charnley River-Artesian Range Wildlife Sanctuary to implement thousands of kilometres of aerial burns, despite the challenges imposed by the current travel restrictions.
As fires encroached on the Blue Mountains in NSW, a local conservation group acted quickly to rescue an isolated population of Koalas. When the Koalas were ready to be released, AWC ecologist Andy Howe was on-site to help out.
Dr Eridani Mulder coordinated the involvement of AWC ecologists in several bushfire recovery projects, including the deployment of strike teams to conduct rapid ecological assessments in northern NSW and on Kangaroo Island.
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