Naming Australia's Biodiversity – it matters

Ian Cresswell

Ian Cresswell heads the National Oceans Office, a Branch of the Marine and Biodiversity Division of the Australian Department of Environment and Water Resources based in Hobart, Tasmania. Ian has more than 20 years experience as a professional manager working mostly in conservation science policy, both nationally and internationally. He has had several roles in the Department of the Environment including marine bioregional planning, managing the import and export of Australian native wildlife, the assessment of the environmental impact of importing exotic species into Australia, head of the Australian delegation to CITES, and environmental assessment of Australian fisheries. He has also managed a range of other issues within the Department of Environment including management of domestic and international marine species and has played a key role in the establishment of the national systems for both marine and terrestrial protected areas. He has also held the position of Director of the Australian Biological Resources Study (ABRS) tasked with facilitating the discovery and documentation of all Australian species.

For more than a decade Mr. Cresswell has played a lead role in Australia in the development of several major biogeographic classification frameworks for Australia including the Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia (IBRA), the Integrated Marine and Coastal Regionalisation for Australia (IMCRA), and the National Vegetation Information System (NVIS). He has played an important role in guiding the technical development of these systems, while also actively promoting their adoption in an integrated fashion throughout all jurisdictions.

Internationally Ian has also worked for the Secretariat to the Convention on Biological Diversity and has played an active part in the formulation of the Global Taxonomy Initiative (GTI) and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).

Currently within the Marine and Biodiversity Division he co-leads marine planning for Australian waters working to improve our understanding of all of our ocean realm, in particular the major conservation values in each marine region, and how we should manage them, including through the establishment of a representative marine protected area network.

Ian has never been a taxonomist, but is a major supporter of the value of taxonomy to support good decision making.