Bruce Lindenmayer Memorial Lecture - David Lindenmayer 'Re-imagining fire in the land of fire'

Bruce Lindenmayer Memorial Lecture

Australia is the most fire-prone continent on earth. The relationship between fire, fire management, fire risks and biodiversity is complex and often very poorly understood by the vast majority Australians. Many of the opinions on fire in the media and populist literature are ill-informed. Some actions like logging, thinning and even prescribed burning can actually make some Australian ecosystems more flammable. They can also alter fire regimes – or the sequence of fires in an area – with profound long-term negative impacts on biodiversity and the integrity of ecosystems. This talk discusses many new insights into the ecology and management of wildfire and other kinds of fire in Australian landscapes. It charts a new path towards better understanding fire and its management in the land of fire.  

Biography

Distinguished Professor David Lindenmayer, AO FAA, is a world-leading expert in forest and woodland ecology, resource management, conservation science, and biodiversity conservation. He has maintained some of the largest, long-term research programs in Australia, with some exceeding 42 years in duration. He is among the world's most productive and most highly-cited scientists, particularly in forest ecology and conservation biology and has published more than 1550 scientific articles including 990 peer-reviewed papers in international scientific journals. He has also published 50 books, including many award-winning textbooks and other seminal books. David Lindenmayer held a prestigious Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship from 2013-2018, where he worked on biodiversity indices, metrics and proxies. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (elected 2008), a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America (elected in 2019), Fellow of the Royal Zoological Society of NSW (elected 2022), and Fellow of the American Academy of Sciences (elected 2023). He was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 2014. His research has been recognised through numerous awards, including the Eureka Science Prize (three times), Whitley Award (10 times), the Serventy Medal for Ornithology, the Ellis Troughton Medal for contributions to Mammalogy, and the Australian Natural History Medallion. In 2018, he was awarded the prestigious Whittaker Medal from the Ecological Society of America. He was awarded the Macfarlane Burnett Medal for Life Sciences by the Australian Academy of Sciences in 2024.

Booking link: https://www.trybooking.com/DHLPY

Booking
This special Memorial Lecture will be held at 6pm in a venue to be confirmed closer to the date. We welcome donations by gold coins, notes, or electronically. The Friends use donations received at each talk to support Gardens’ programs and development and we thank all those who have donated. 

It is a good idea to reserve a seat at the talks that you wish to attend; talks may be booked out very quickly.  Bookings can be made from about 30 days in advance until the night before the talk or until seating limits are reached. 

Booking link: https://www.trybooking.com/DHLPY

The Friends of the ANBG thank the speakers who volunteer their time and talents to further the knowledge of all attending events in the Gardens. Many summaries or PowerPoint presentations of Thursday talks are available to Friends at the ANBG library. Please direct queries about the talks to the Thursday Talks Team: email talks@friendsanbg.org.au.