Researcher biography

Hugh is currently Chief Councillor of the newly created Biodiversity Council and Chief Scientist of Accounting for Nature, and has recently been Queensland Chief Scientist and Chief Scientist of The Nature Conservancy, the world’s largest environmental non-government organisation. He retains a 20 percent appointment at The University of Queensland and was an ARC Laureate Fellow until the end of 2018. His research interests are in conservation research, operations research and ecology. More specifically, his research interests include securing the world's biological diversity: efficient nature reserve design, habitat reconstruction, monitoring, optimal management of populations for conservation, cost-effective conservation actions for threatened species, pest control and population harvesting, survey methods for detecting bird decline, bird conservation ecology, environmental accounting and metapopulation dynamics.