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Other Online events

Fight for Planet A

Past event - 2021
27 May Streaming from
6:30-7:30PM Eastern
6:00-7:00PM Central
4:30-5:30PM Western
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Australia has the worst mammal extinction rate of any country in the world. Three of our native species have gone extinct in the last decade and hundreds more are teetering on the brink. As the human population expands causing increased urbanisation, deforestation, and climate change, the plight of our wildlife is both dire and urgent. Can we save our remaining native species? What if our conservation efforts have unforeseen legal consequences? Join our panel and host Joey Clarke as we discuss what Australians are doing in the name of wildlife conservation.

Hosted by

Joey Clarke (Science Communicator)
Joey has worked with Australian Wildlife Conservancy since 2011, first as an ecologist in the Kimberley (with a research project on the Black Grasswren) and now as a science communicator. He has worked across AWC sanctuaries from Cape York to Central Australia and the Gulf of Carpentaria.

From data to decisions, a new frontier

Dr Elisa Bayraktarov (EcoCommons Program Manager)
Dr. Elisa Bayraktarov is an ecologist who uses data to craft conservation solutions. She works with a team of software developers, scientists, communicators and trainers to build the EcoCommons Virtual Laboratories which provide analytics to researchers, students, and decision-makers. Elisa and team developed the Threatened Species Index as the world’s first index reporting on trends for Australia’s threatened species.

Saving species by breaking the law

Professor Michael Bode (Professor of Mathematics)
Sometimes it's OK to break the law if you want to save some species.

All you need is a philosophical justification to distance yourself from common criminals, and a mathematical model to ensure you don't get caught.

Michael completed his PhD in 2008, and has since worked in departments of botany, marine biology, and mathematics. He won the AAS 2019 Fenner Medal, and helped led research centres in threatened species conservation, environmental decisions, coral reef restoration, and Antarctic research.

Wildlife and museum genetics

Dr Erin Hahn (Postdoctoral Fellow)
Have you dreamt of traveling back in time to prevent threats such as bushfires and rising sea levels? We can't change the timeline but we can look at clues from our past to inform our decisions and protect our future. In the absence of a time machine, I collect historical clues from the Australian National Wildlife Collection.

Erin received her PhD in Genomics from the University of Arizona in 2016, picking up a National Science Foundation traineeship and two daughters during her studies. She is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at CSIRO and was recently selected as a Superstar of STEM.

Climate change, media, and the public

Dr Lucy Richardson (Postdoctoral Research Fellow)
Does the media communicate climate change in a way that will help us take action? How might the public respond to climate change messages? These questions are key areas of focus in my research at the Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub.

In this talk I'll give a very brief snapshot of important shifts in the media coverage of climate change during bushfires and introduce you to some of the ways different people can react to climate change messages.