Biography 

Dr Kate Brandis' work as a conservation scientist encompasses critical global challenges both in Australia and internationally, focusing on two key complex problems: environmental water management and wildlife forensics.  

Dr Brandis is a leading Australian expert in environmental water management with an international reputation, providing foundational scientific knowledge that directly supports evidence-based water management and policy to achieve positive environmental outcomes. Her highly strategic research has been used to transform on-ground actions in collaboration with environmental managers and policymakers. By working closely with policy regulators and managers, as well as international scientific experts, Dr Brandis’ research is increasingly transforming State and Federal government policy in Australia. 

Likewise, her expertise in working with government and other stakeholders has been instrumental in her efforts to combat the illegal trafficking of wildlife. Through her research in the field of wildlife forensics, she has developed vital novel applications for detecting and policing crime that have driven scientific advances in technologies complementary to existing approaches. Working with Australian governments, international non-government organisations, and industry, her applications provide real-time and readily accessible solutions for combating the illegal wildlife trade and wildlife crime enforcement, as well as promoting basic research advances in conservation and animal science. 

Research areas 

Environmental water management 

Dr Brandis’ research and policy impact in environmental water management covers three main areas:  

a) Waterbird ecology 

She is a recognised international and national expert in colonial waterbird ecology. Colonial waterbirds are keystone species that have complex and poorly understood dependencies on environmental water management practices. However, by uncovering the interactive effects of waterbird breeding and environmental water conditions across Australia, her research has helped to unravel the spatial and ecological relationships critical in mitigating the effects of water extraction policies.  

b) Environmental flow management and wetland ecology 

She is a recognised leader in environmental flow management for ecological outcomes and wetland ecology in Australia, particularly for the Murray-Darling Basin. She leads research and monitoring programs targeting specific knowledge gaps that are critical for national and state policy development and adaptive management of environmental water.  

c) Co-designed research with Indigenous communities 

Indigenous communities are vital stakeholders with unique perspectives and knowledge. Dr Brandis is actively engaged in building inclusive pathways for deliberation, communities of practice, and knowledge exchange with Indigenous communities.  

Wildlife forensics 

Combating the illegal trade of wildlife is a globally complex and challenging issue for conservation organisations and governments. Through advances in novel technologies Dr Brandis has adopted from other industries, she has designed and led a research program that provides inexpensive, practical, and robust methods for determining the provenance of captured wildlife, quantifies diets of wild animals, identifies movements of waterbirds, and detects heavy metal pollution in wild birds.  

She uses methods such as stable isotopes and elemental analyses from X-ray fluorescence to build machine learning models that can be deployed to detect potential illegality and provenance in real-time. Dr Brandis collaborates with government (Taronga, Border Force), industry (Olympus), and NGOs (Traffic, Katala) on this work. 

Expertise 

Dr Brandis has experience in ecological response modelling, specifically waterbird responses to different flow and wetland conditions. She has extensive experience in a range of survey techniques and datasets including hydrological, climatic, ecological survey data, atlas data, satellite imagery, remote sensing, aerial photography, geographic information system (GIS) datasets, and scientific literature.  

Through her work, in 2020 Dr Brandis identified a major knowledge gap in our understanding of the continental-scale movement and habitat use by waterbirds, leading to her pioneering research into the novel application of intrinsic biomarkers to track waterbirds and other taxa. 

Dr Brandis established a research portfolio in this area after specialised training in the United States and the successful completion of a three-year fellowship (2016-2018) with ANSTO. 

Projects 

Flow-MER Project 

Dr Brandis is the lead investigator for the Lower Balonne Area Flow-MER Program 2024-2029, leading a core group of 15 researchers and other specialists from universities, federal and state government, and indigenous organisations.  

She is also a co-investigator for the Macquarie River and Marshes Area Flow-MER program, and a project manager for both the Lower Balonne and Macquarie River and Marshes Areas research programs.  

Further, she is a key member of the Flow-MER Basin Scale Leadership Team (led by CSIRO) and is a co-lead and co-chair for the Basin Scale Waterbird Theme and leads the Basin Scale Waterbird research project. 

Wildlife forensics 

Dr Brandis was involved in an innovative wildlife forensic study identifying bioindicators. The study was aimed at combating the illegal wildlife trade and has resulted in numerous collaborations with international partners and large corporations.  In partnership with the Taronga Conservation Society, she was successful in attracting significant philanthropic donations resulting in a three-year research fellowship (2020-2023). 

Feather Map of Australia  

Dr Brandis’ expertise in intrinsic biomarkers led to the highly successful national citizen science project, the Feather Map of Australia Project. The Project saw hundreds of citizens from across the country collect waterbird feathers and send them in for analysis. The feathers were studied to identify stable isotopes and elements that are incorporated into feathers through the ingestion of food to track the movement of waterbirds, to create the first ever Feather Map of Australia. The project was an Australian first and provided a new non-invasive method of tracking waterbirds without the need for capturing animals. 

Qualifications and achievements 

• BSc(hons) Macquarie University 1998 

• MEnvSc Macquarie University 2002 

• PhD University of New South Wales 2010 

In 2023, Dr Brandis was awarded the NSW Environment and Heritage Eureka Prize for Applied Environmental Research as a member of the Waterbirds Aerial Survey Team in 2023.  

She is a highly accomplished academic with impact at the intersection of science and policy. Her career output to date includes authoring 101 publications, of which 50 are peer-reviewed scientific publications, three book chapters, and 48 reports to State and Federal government agencies. She was a senior author on 38 per cent of her scientific publications (lead author on 28 per cent, and 10 per cent as last listed author), and lead author on 40 per cent of all reports.  

Committees, affiliations and memberships 

Dr Brandis has worked on multi-disciplinary teams and been involved in expert advisory panels on a number of specific wetland projects including the Macquarie Marshes, Narran Lakes, Kings Billabong, Hattah Lakes, and Lowbidgee Wetlands. 

She is a member of the IUCN Species Specialist Group: Stork, Ibis and Spoonbills, and a member of the Australian Wildlife Health Network. 

Dr Brandis is an associate editor for three scientific journals: Waterbirds (IF0.7 BioOne); Wetlands, Ecology, and Management (IF1.6 Springer Nature); and Drones (IF4.4, MDPI) where I was an invited guest editor for a special issue on Advances of Drones in Wildlife Research.