Committee

President

Dr Linda Broadhurst

Director, Australian National Herbarium
Group Leader Botanical Collections, Centre for Australian National Biodiversity Research (CANBR), CSIRO National Research Collections Australia (NRCA)

Vice President

Bob Makinson

Sydney, NSW

Secretary

Dr Melissa Millar

Science Division, Department of Parks and Wildlife
Perth, WA

Treasurer

Merryl Bradley

Canberra, ACT

Committee members

Doug Bickerton

Dept Environment and Natural Resources
Adelaide, SA

Kate Brown

Ecologist
Department of Parks and Wildlife
Perth, WA

Dr David Coates

Program Leader, Flora Conservation and Herbarium
Department of Parks and Wildlife
Perth, WA

Anne Cochrane

Science Division, Department of Parks and Wildlife 
Perth, WA

Dr Paul Gibson Roy

Greening Australia
Sydney, NSW

Michelle Haby

Environmental consultant
Kangaroo Island, SA

Maria Matthes

Environmental consultant
Northern NSW

Helena Mills

Senior Environmental Officer
Environmental Protection Authority
Perth, WA

Cathy Offord

Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust
The Australian Botanic Garden, Mount Annan, NSW

Natalie Tapson

Horticultural Botanist
Royal Tasman Botanic Gardens
Hobart, TAS

Ex-Officio member

Rewi Elliot

Secretary, New Zealand Plant Conservation Network
Wellington, New Zealand

Dr Linda Broadhurst - President

Linda is the Director of the Australian National Herbarium in Canberra, one of CSIRO’s six National Research Collections. At the moment her major research interests include assessing seed production areas to ensure they are producing high genetic quality seed for restoration. In conjunction with partners including the ANPC, she is also building a project to assess where and how to restore Silver Banksia (Banksia marginata) for the Bring Back the Banksias Project. Linda is a regular presenter at ANPC workshops including the recent Provenance Workshops. Studying human biology at university, Linda by chance took a plant biology course as part of her undergrad program and the Tutor inspired a love of plants. She went on to do a PhD in the conservation of Geleznowia verrucosa, a monotypic species in WA. After working for CALM (now DPaW) in WA Linda moved to CSIRO in 2000.

Bob Makinson - Vice President

Bob was employed as Conservation Botanist with the Royal Botanic Gardens & Domain Trust, Sydney for over 30 years working in plant taxonomy, herbarium management, wild-plant conservation science and practice, and science internship (volunteer) program development. He is a former Curator of the Australian National Herbarium (Canberra), and a former member of the NSW Scientific Committee (for extinction-risk assessment of species and ecological communities). He has been an active ANPC member since 1992 and is a past president. Bob is a regular presenter at ANPC workshops and wrote and presented the recent Myrtle Rust workshops.

Dr Melissa Millar - Secretary

Melissa is a Research Scientist with the Plant Science and Herbarium Program of the WA Department of Parks and Wildlife, where her chief responsibilities are to conduct research that contributes to the circumscription, conservation and management of Western Australian flora. Melissa's research utilises a range of molecular genetic techniques to examine the evolutionary processes that maintain genetic diversity and shape patterns of genetic structure in native taxa. Her work contributes to understanding long term evolutionary influences of the persistence and phylogeographic structure of native taxa as well as the effects of current anthropogenic disturbances such as fragmentation and the requirements for successful long term restoration.

Merryl Bradley - Treasurer

Merryl has a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of WA (1973) majoring in Organic Chemistry. She had twenty years experience in the Commonwealth Public Service in a variety of roles, including project management, contract management, public affairs, marketing, financial management, project co-ordination and process simplification. Since resigning from the Public Service she has worked as both a volunteer and Business Manager for the ANPC and undertaken part time study at the Canberra Institute of Technology towards a Diploma in Environmental Science.

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.

Dr Kate Brown - Committee member

Kate is an ecologist with the Department of Parks and Wildlife in the Swan Region of Western Australia working on the protection and restoration of regionally significant bushland including a number of threatened ecological communities. Her work currently involves developing management techniques for environmental weeds and understanding impacts of prescribed burning on the plant communities of Tuart Woodlands. She is also working on restoration of seasonal clay-based wetlands including monitoring and managing the impacts of threatening processes over time.

Dr David Coates - Committee member

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 Parks and Wildlife in 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.

Dr Anne Cochrane - Committee member

Anne is a Senior Research Scientist with the Department of Parks and Wildlife 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

Dr Paul Gibson Roy - Committee member

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).

Michelle Haby - Committee member

Michelle started an environmental consulting business on Kangaroo Island about five years ago and is accredited wtih the South Australian Native Vegetation Council to conduct vegetation surveys for clearance applications. She is passionate about conserving native vegetation and firmly believes that revegetation plays a big role in conservation. She would like to see a lot more nursery based trials into germination so local nurseries can help restore habitat in a cost effective manner with the full spectrum of species that once grew in their areas. She also thinks that the general community’s gardens can play a role in threatened and regionally significant plant species conservation. By making these species available to the public, they can gain an appreciation and connection with them, thereby increasing their profile and worth.

 Maria Matthes - Committee member

Maria has worked for 25 years in the field of plant conservation for State and Local Government, and more recently as an ecological consultant. She has been an active member of the ANPC for 17 years, and was convenor and co-author of the first ANPC translocation guidelines and co-author of the 2nd edition, and is a regular presenter at the ANPC translocation and restoration workshops. Her particular interests are the application of genetic research, ecological restoration, translocations, monitoring pollination, fire ecology, climate change, invertebrate-plant interactions, sustainable land management, and community involvement, including Aboriginal groups and farmers.

Helena Mills - Committee member

Helena is a Senior Environmental Officer with the Environmental Protection Authority in WA. Her passion for native plant and vegetation conservation has taken her across the continent and from government to NGO and back again. Helena has worked for the Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research, the Commonwealth environment department, WWF Australia, the National Trust of Australia (WA) and now the Western Australian government. Helena’s experience includes projects working with private landholders to conserve native vegetation, environmental impact assessment from a regulatory perspective and assessing ecological communities for listing as threatened.

Cathy Offord - Committee member

Natalie Tapson - Committee member

Natalie has an honours degree majoring in Forest Ecology from the University of Tasmania and has worked as the Horticultural Botanist at the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens since 1997. Her position is varied and includes documentation and labelling of the living collection and responsibility for the library and herbarium collections. She is actively involved in the RTBG conservation program and has carried out tissue culture research, translocation and monitoring of rare and threatened species. Natalie is part of the seedbank collecting team at the RTBG and has recently returned from working on Macquarie Island, completing a program to expand an ex-situ seed orchard of the critically endangered Azorella macquariensis.