Honours for Hugh Possingham

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Honours for Hugh Possingham Professor Hugh Possingham’s sustained, top-level leadership and research contri- butions in Mathematics and Ecology have very recently been recognised with two signiﬁcant honours. Foreign Associate, U.S. National Academy of Sciences The U.S. National Academy of Sciences elected Hugh Possingham as a Foreign As- sociate at its recent Annual Meeting. Foreign associates are non-voting members of the Academy, elected in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achieve- ments in original research. For the full announcement of all 84 new members and 21 foreign associates see http://www.nasonline.org/news-and-multimedia/news/may- 3-2016-NAS-Election.html. Chief scientist with The Nature Conservancy Professor Hugh Possingham has been appointed Chief Scientist with The Nature Conservancy, one of the world’s largest conservation groups. He will lead the work of more than 600 scientists engaged in conservation eﬀorts across 69 countries around the world, including Australia. For further details see http://www.nature.org/newsfeatures/pressreleases/dr-hugh-possingham-named- chief-scientist-of-the-nature-conservancy.xml. Hugh is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, and a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists. He is currently Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and director of The Centre for Biodiversity and Con- servation Science at the University of Queensland. He is also director of the Aus- tralian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions and the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Program Threatened Species Recovery Hub. The Marxan software developed by his team drove the rezoning of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, and is now used in more than 150 countries..

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How to make conservation a success How to make biological conservation a success Hugh Possingham Summary I discuss some of the research we have completed in our conservation science centres over the past 15 years and how it has delivered conservation outcomes in policy and on the ground, both nationally and globally. First, I will illustrate our approach to prioritising actions and species triage. This cost-effectiveness ap- proach has recently been adopted by two states – why isn’t it more widely used? Second, we have developed a tool for building networks of marine and terrestrial reserves called Marxan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Marxan). I will explain how it was used to rezone the Great Barrier Reef at the beginning of this century, and some of the benefits and pitfalls of its application globally. Marxan is now used for spatial planning in over 140 countries. Finally I will explain some of our thinking about how and why to invest in monitoring for nature conservation. Why is a logical approach to monitoring so hard to pursue, or is it just a matter of time? I conclude that our approaches eventually deliver conservation outcomes and efficiencies; however the path to adoption is very slow. There are two keys to our success in delivering conservation outcomes in the real world. First we work closely with government, not just in delivering research outcomes but also in formulating the problems we tackle through partnerships. Building this relationship consumes 20 % of my working life and requires respect and consideration – although it has frustrating moments. The reward of collaboration includes fifty million dollars of applied research income on top of protecting a large amount of biodiversity.
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Professor Hugh Possingham
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Hugh Possingham Citation Thursday 2 May 2019, 2.00Pm Chancellor, It
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Decision Theory in Conservation Biology: Are There Rules of Thumb?
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Seminar by Professor Hugh Possingham from The
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