Associate Professor Hedley Grantham

My Expertise

My main interest is biodiversity conservation and particularly around effective conservation planning. I have contributed towards science on how to integrating ecological, social, and economic considerations in planning, management and monitoring. My focus includes prioritizing conservation areas, designing protected networks, tackling climate change, involving stakeholders, and evaluating ongoing management. I am interested in how to design impactful monitoring strategies for adaptive management. Specifically, techniques to quantify and evaluate ecosystems and their overall integrity. Furthermore, my research extends to the restoration of degraded ecosystems. This involves measuring ecosystem health, identifying factors of stress, implementing effective restoration strategies, tracking progress, and making necessary adjustments to interventions.

Keywords

biodiversity & conservation

conservation decision-making

threatened ecosystems

marine protected areas

ecological monitoring

Fields of Research (FoR)

Conservation and biodiversity, Ecology

SEO tags

Conservation and efficiency

Protected Conservation Areas in Marine Environments

Integrated (ecosystem) assessment and management

Ecosystem Assessment and Management of Forest and Woodlands Environments

Biography

I have a joint position as Chief Scientist at Bush Heritage Australia and as an academic within the Centre for Ecosystem Science at UNSW. Part of this role is also Director (research) at Fowlers Gap Arid Zone Research Station. I obtained my Ph.D at the University of Queensland (UQ) on conservation planning in dynamic systems. After a joint post-doctoral fellowship with UQ and The Nature Conservancy focussed on supporting the systematic planning and zoning of a Marine Protected Area network in Raja Ampat Indonesia, I managed to work for international conservation NGOs, Conservation International and Wildlife Conservation Society. I led conservation planning programs and projects in marine and terrestrial areas across 30+ countries over the past 15 years.

My Research Activities

I have contributed to the research field of conservation planning a research field focused on strategically safeguarding biodiversity and its benefits to people. I combine ecological, social, and economic factors to design effective conservation strategies including how to prioritise important areas for conservation, how to identify strategies and actions that are likely to be the most beneficial to biodiversity and people, and how to monitor and adaptively manage protected and conserved areas. This includes themes such as how to use decision support tools to prioritize areas for protection, create protected networks, address climate change impacts, engage stakeholders, assess economic values, and monitoring systems that help with adaptive management. I am also interested in ecosystem recovery including restoration, reintroductions and how to effectively monitor.