About Me
Hi! I’m Emily and I am a Conservation Biologist from Jervis Bay, Australia. I completed my Bachelor of Conservation Biology (Honours)(Dean’s Scholar) at the University of Wollongong from 2019 – 2022. As of 2024, I have started as a PhD Student at the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, at the University of Western Sydney.
My passion for bird identification and learning bird song began when I participated in a number of bird biodiversity surveys as part of a research project in my 3rd year of University. I was then lucky enough to complete my Honours project in 2022 on the ‘Song Culture of the Endangered Eastern Bristlebird, Dasyornis brachypterus.’
After completing my Honours, I continued to undertake acoustic monitoring fieldwork, recording Eastern Bristlebird song in the field across Eastern Australia. My passion for monitoring and conserving threatened species, has also sparked an interest in photography, where I spend a lot of my free time photographing species at home, and travelling throughout Australia in search of those I’ve never seen in the wild before.
Research
PhD Student, Doctor of Philosophy, Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, University of Western Sydney
Supervisors: Dr Anastasia Dalziell, Professor Justin Welbergen, Dr Kimberly Maute
Topic: Cultural evolution in the song of the endangered Eastern Bristlebird, Dasyornis brachypterus
Conferences
2022 BirdLife Shoalhaven – BirdHaven Festival Conference
2024 Bundanon Trust – Shoalhaven ThreatenedSpecies Symposium
Species Conservation
I have a special passion for threatened species conservation, and hope to contribute to, and work on, a number of threatened species programs throughout my career. As part of my Honours and PhD Research I was lucky enough to take part in a trans-jurisdictional three-part conservation translocation program from 2022 – 2024. The aim of this program was to establish a new, self-sustaining, and genetically viable population of the Eastern Bristlebird, in Wilsons Promontory, Victoria, where the species is classified as critically endangered state-wide, largely due to wildfire, with the Black Summer Bushfires in 2020 –2021 being the most recent major contributor to population decline. You can watch the short documentary here
The Eastern Bristlebirds Long Road to Recovery
An Australian-first interstate translocation for the ground-dwelling bird was undertaken by the partnership between the Victorian Government’s Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP), Parks Victoria, Parks Australia, the New South Wales Department of Planning and Environment, Zoos Victoria and Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary to boost the Eastern Bristlebird’s population size, genetic diversity and long-term prospect of survival.