Committee

President

Dr David Coates

Program Leader, Flora Conservation and Herbarium, Department of Environment and Conservation
Perth, WA

Vice President

Dr Paul Gibson Roy

Burnley College, University of Melbourne
Richmond, VIC

Secretary

Dr Zoe Knapp

Policy Officer, Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities
Canberra ACT

Treasurer

Adrian Fethers

Canberra, ACT

Committee members

Professor Paul Adam

School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences (BEES)
University of New South Wales
Sydney, NSW

Doug Bickerton

Dept Environment and Natural Resources, Adelaide, SA

Anne Cochrane

Science Division, Department of Environment and Conservation
Perth, WA

Philip Collier

Rubicon Wildlife Sanctuary, Port Sorell, TAS

Paul Donatiu

Executive Coordinator
National Parks Association of Queensland
Brisbane, QLD

Sally Jacka

NRM Project Officer
Tweed Shire Council

Helena Mills

National Trust of Australia
Perth WA

Noushka Reiter

Department of Sustainability and Environment
Horsham, VIC

Mark Richardson

Consultant
Klemzig, SA

David Taylor

Australian National Botanic Gardens
Canberra, ACT

Ex-Officio member

John Sawyer

Secretary, New Zealand Plant Conservation Network
Wellington, New Zealand

Dr David Coates - President

David Coates is a Senior Principal Research Scientist and Program Leader for the Flora Conservation and Herbarium Program and responsible for coordinating and facilitating research in flora conservation and plant systematics in the Department of Environment and Conservation Western Australia. Program activities cover ecological and genetic studies, recovery of rare and threatened species, taxonomy and systematics of the Western Australian flora and research aimed at the amelioration of threatening processes such as Phytophthora dieback, habitat fragmentation and climate change. Included in the Program are the Western Australian Herbarium and the Threatened Flora Seed Centre. David’s research interests cover conservation biology, conservation genetics and evolutionary biology. He is a member of the Western Australia Threatened Species Scientific Committee and adjunct Professor at the University of Western Australia and Murdoch University.

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Dr Paul Gibson Roy - Vice President

Paul has been involved for some years with the restoration of wildflower grasslands and grassy woodlands, both threatened plant communities. Since 2004 he has headed the Grassy Groundcover Research Project (GGRP), a multiregional research project focusing on the restoration of complex herbaceous vegetation on agricultural lands by direct seeding. The GGRP was initiated as a joint partnership between Greening Australia (Victoria) and the University of Melbourne. Paul is also actively involved with issues of sustainability within the broader horticultural industry and was a founding member of the industry-based NGO Sustainable Gardening Australia (SGA).

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Dr Zoe Knapp - Secretary

Zoë is a policy officer with the Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities. She has a background in environmental science and consulting, including international positions as a visiting scholar at Sweet Briar College, Virginia, USA, postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Institution, USA, and intern at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, UK. Zoë completed her PhD in 2006 at the University of Melbourne, Australia, which focused on the biology and reintroduction of threatened terrestrial orchids. During this time, she was also employed as an Orchid Research Officer at the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne, assisting with a national Banksia Award winning program to propagate threatened orchids for reintroduction.

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Adrian Fethers - Treasurer

Adrian worked in Social Research in Australia and overseas for 30 years designing, conducting and reporting surveys for industry, government and “not for profit” organizations.  He is familiar with accounting standards and practices through management of company finances from 1970 to 1985, and more recently as Treasurer to community organizations similar to ANPC.  He sees the treasurers role is to ensure financial integrity and long term viability of the organization.  

Adrian is committed to slowing the pace of environmental degradation and helping to preserve what remains of Australia’s unique flora and fauna and feels that the ANPC has an important role in this process.

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Professor Paul Adam - Committee member

Paul Adam is an associate professor in the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of New South Wales. He has carried out research in a variety of habitats, including saltmarsh, rainforest and heathland. He has many years of involvement with government conservation agencies and with NGO environmental groups. He has been involved in the development of environmental policy and with the implementation of threatened species legislation in NSW and has continuing interest in the interaction between science and the law in the environmental area. Career highlights include writing the nomination for the listing of NSW rainforests on the World Heritage List and writing monographs on both saltmarsh and rainforest ecology. He has  for many years been active with the bush management activities of the National Trust in NSW.

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Doug Bickerton - Committee Member

Doug has been Threatened Plant Ecologist with South Australia’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) since 2006. In this role he provides scientific and policy advice to threatened flora recovery teams and to DENR. One of his key research interests has been in securing funding for population genetics studies to directly inform management of threatened flora in South Australia. In 2011 Doug was Acting Manager of South Australia’s Seed Conservation Centre for six months, overseeing the seed collection, research and storage activities of the Centre.

In 1998 Doug completed a Masters degree in Natural Resource Management with his presentation of a thesis on the pollination biology and ecology of a threatened orchid, Caladenia rigida. For the next five years he was engaged in threatened orchid recovery in South Australia, before moving to a role that allowed him to develop expertise in ecological restoration and threat abatement, particularly pest plant control.

Doug has been an active member of the NGO Threatened Plant Action Group for 15 years, and for six years he sat on the Executive Committee of the Weed Management Society of South Australia, including a stint as President.

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Anne Cochrane - Committee member

Anne is a Senior Research Scientist with the Department of Environment and Conservation in Western Australia. She has managed the State conservation seed bank for rare and threatened species since 1993, a facility that supports wild species conservation and one that is strongly linked with the translocation of species as a recovery action. She has been a long term member of the ANPC and has contributed to the ANPC publication Plant Germplasm Conservation in Australia: Strategies and Guidelines for developing, managing and utilising ex situ collections. She is currently undertaking PhD research into seed ecology of Banksia and climate change.

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Phil Collier - Committee member

Phil is a "retired" academic, last position was in Business Information Systems at The University of Melbourne. With his partner, Robin Garnett, he now actively manages a 20 ha covenanted property Rubicon Sanctuary near Port Sorell Tasmania. It has 11 threatened plant species and about 50 native orchid species. They have an active management (disturbance) and monitoring program (4th year just completed) investigating the life history of several of the orchid species, prioritising those that are threatened. He is the inaugural president of "Threatened Plants Tasmania" constituted as a Wildcare Inc Nature Care group. This organisation assists the threatened species botanists in DPIPWE with surveying, monitoring and some weeding activities. Previously he voluntarily donated over 5000 plant specimens to the Tasmanian Herbarium drawn from far and wide in Tasmania, and has been honoured by the naming of Xerochrysum collierianum. He is also the author of the series of Tasmanian "Plant Identikits", that have sold many thousands of copies over a 20+ year period.

Phil firmly believes that actively managing intact bushland is much more difficult than restoring degraded habitats, and there is dearth of knowledge about how this is best achieved.

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Paul Donatiu - Committee member

Paul Donatiu is currently Executive Coordinator for the National Parks Association of Queensland.  Paul has worked for WWF-Australia, Griffith University and Greening Australia.  He is passionate about rare plants and has a special affinity for the granite country in Southern Queensland and northern NSW.  Paul’s interests include restoration and disturbance ecology, bushwalking and nature photography.  As the basis for a Churchill Fellowship in 2010, Paul will examine how climate refugia are being identified in California, Europe and South Africa and whether such areas should be prioritised within new protected area acquisitions in Australia.

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Sally Jacka - Committee member

Sally has worked for eight years in natural resource management community engagement in Darwin and now in Tweed, northern NSW. While in Darwin, for ten years she was an active member of the Top End Native Plant Society and instigated their membership with ANPC. She studied Environmental Science, completing an honours thesis in seed biology and ex situ propagation of two rare Arnhem land Boronia species. Her interest in taxonomy lead her to participate in ANH’s Student Botanical Internship Program in 2005. She is passionate about plant conservation and a staunch advocate for increasing and improving conservation incentives for private landholders.

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Helena Mills- Committee member

Helena has been working with private landholders in WA to conserve and manage their native vegetation for over five years, currently via the Conservation Covenant Program of the National Trust of Australia (WA), and previously with WWF-Australia. She has also worked for the Australian Government Department of Environment and Heritage, listing species and ecological communities as threatened under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, and at the Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research, writing profiles of threatened native plants for a national database. Helena found her passion for Australian plants during an Internship at the Australian National Herbarium in 1997, and has never looked back. The exciting diversity of plants in SW Australia drove her across the continent where she has now happily settled down to a life of kayaking, talking to farmers and wandering around the bush. Helena has been an active member of ANPC for 8 years (six years on the Committee, four of which as Secretary).

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Dr Noushka Reiter - Committee member

Noushka is a threatened flora Biodiversity Officer with the Department of Sustainability and Environment in Horsham. She propagates and conducts research on threatened orchids and their mycorrhizal fungi for re-introductions, for the Victorian Orchid Conservation Program. Her interests include Borya species, rock outcrops, salt lakes and B grade horror movies.

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Mark Richardson - Committee member

Having worked with indigenous floras in both Australia and overseas since the late 1970’s, Mark has developed a strong interest in plant conservation.  During his time as the curator of the Australian National Botanic Gardens (1986-1996), he was a co-founder of the ANPC and the Indonesian equivalent INetPC in the 1990s.  Moving to central Australia, he was the curator of botany at the Alice Springs Desert Park (1996-2003) which has played an important role in promoting the importance of Australia’s desert flora and fauna.  More recently, Mark was based in London as Botanic Gardens Conservation International’s regional director for the Middle East and Asia (2003-2006) as a part of the HSBC funded 'Investing in Nature' program. He now works from Adelaide as a botanical consultant.

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David Taylor - Committee member

David is the Curator at the Australian National Botanic Gardens. His previous roles include Senior Horticulturalist, Horticulture manager and Collections Assistant. He has a keen interest in landscape design and construction and has been involved in projects using features such as dry creek beds / above ground drainage, use of locally occurring species, and sustainable low maintenance landscapes. David has also worked at Yarralumla Nursery as Wholesale Retail and Production Manager working on the research and marketing of new species and selections. David is a member of the Bush Heritage Trust and lives on / is custodian of a rural block near Gundaroo NSW with good remnant grassy box woodland.

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