Ms Alison Russell-French, President
Alison is a former Australian Public Servant.  Her career spanned natural resource management areas of the Australian Public Service across many areas of the Department of Environment, Heritage and the Arts.  She has wide experience in policy and program management and administration across a range of national and international programs including the Coasts and Clean Seas Program, Coastcare, National Reserve Systems, the National Wetlands Program, national and international migratory waterbird conservation, national and World Heritage policy and management.  Before her retirement, Alison was a senior member of the Australian Government's NRM Team managing delivery of the NHT and National Salinity Program funding.  She has substantial international representation experience including leading Australian delegations at meetings of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, the APEC Marine Resources Working Group, Wetlands International, and the Bilateral Migratory Bird Agreements with Japan and China. She also has considerable experience across a range of Indigenous related programs and was the Australian Government member on Landcare Australia, the Board of Members of Wetlands International, and Chair of the Wetlands International - Asia Pacific Council.  Alison took a leading role in the development and acceptance in the Asia Pacific region of the Asia Pacific Migratory Waterbird Conservation Strategy: 2001 - 2005 and the East Asia-Australasian Flyway which aims to protect the habitat and vital staging sites for migratory birds.  Alison is currently engaged in selected consultancy work. She is a keen bird watcher with a lifetime interest in conservation of Australia's birds, and has served on Council since 1999.
    
Mr Barry Baker, Vice-President
Barry Baker worked for many years with the Commonwealth Environment Department, dealing with wildlife management issues. His work over the last 15 years has focused on development and implementation of recovery plans for threatened species, and threat abatement plans for key threatening processes. Barry is an environmental consultant for Latitude 42 in Hobart, and amongst other things is currently working on the conservation of albatrosses and petrels, particularly minimising interactions with fisheries. He is the Vice-President of Birds Australia, President of the Australasian Seabird Group, represents BA on the OBP Recovery Team, and is an active supporter of the Bird Atlas project.


Dr Peter Dann, Secretary
Peter has been a BA Member for 30 years and has served at various times as: Nest Record Scheme Organiser, Australasian Wader Study Group founding committee member, AWSG The Stilt editor, Emu review editor, and currently Australasian Seabird group Chair. He has had a long involvement with the collection of ornithological data by volunteers. Peter leads a research group at the Phillip Is Nature Park investigating the Island's fauna. He has studied seabirds throughout the southern hemisphere, received an ANZAC fellowship to study penguins in NZ, was a research associate of the Percy FitzPatrick Institute for African Ornithology at the University of Capetown, and a member of the 2003-04 Australian Antarctic Summer Expedition studying King Penguins on Heard Is. He co-edited the book The Penguins: ecology and management, is a research fellow at the University of Melbourne, a Director of the Penguin foundation, and a member of the Antarctic Division's ethics committee.
    
Mr Robert Dunn, Treasurer
Rob is the Director of the Great Eastern Ranges Initiative, which aims to build a conservation corridor from central Victoria to the Atherton Tablelands and beyond. In this role he works closely with a range of community, conservation, industry and government organisations.  Prior to this Rob was the CEO of the Nature Conservation Trust of NSW for four years, which runs a voluntary covenanting scheme and a revolving fund for the purchase, protection and on-sale of private properties with high conservation value. Previously Rob worked as a management consultant, specialising in the not-for-profit sector. From 2000 to 2004 Rob was the Company Secretary and Corporate Services Manager at Landcare Australia. This role involved the negotiation of major sponsorship agreements, such as the Green Bags promotion with Coles, and provided an excellent grounding in the marketing of a national community-based movement. Rob is a Chartered Accountant and has gained broad commercial experience over 28 years. He gained a Graduate Certificate in Ornithology in 2000 and a Masters in Environmental Management in 2005 both from Charles Sturt University.

Dr Michael John Bamford, Councillor
Mike has been a member of BA since 1979, having joined during the first Atlas. He has been active in WA since joining, participating in projects including Australasian Wader Study Group surveys and the South-West Waterbird Project. He continues to be involved in the AWSG and is currently on their committee, and has been on the WA Group Committee since 1995. Mike studied biology at Murdoch University and completed his Ph.D. on the impact of fire upon small vertebrates in Banksia woodland. He and his wife Mandy then established a small business as consulting zoologists. This provides specialist services for environmental impact assessment and for monitoring studies, particularly in association with impacts of development and rehabilitation. Consulting has led to projects in WA, NT, northern Qld and on Christmas Island. In addition, Mike is an occasional lecturer in Zoology at three of Perth's universities; prepared a weekly science and environment column for The West Australian from 1998 to 2003; and is a scientific illustrator with contributions to HANZAB and to the New Atlas. He was the principal illustrator of Ratites and Tinamous, published by Oxford University Press in its series on Bird Families of the World.
    

Ms Kate Ravich, Councillor
Kate Ravich built on her initial nursing training to develop a comprehensive background in small business management, working as a Specialist Medical Practice Manager in the private sector for over twenty years. In the late 1990s she redirected her career towards environmental education. Recognising that to achieve effective education it was essential to understand how people learn and how we direct that learning into behavioural change, she completed a degree in education (B.Ed in Adult Ed) in 2006. Within this she undertook a major study in communication development with a special interest in transformative learning. Kate has been a keen bird observer for many years. Since 1997, she has undertaken volunteer work within Birds Australia throughout its structure; as a committee member and then Chair of the Southern NSW and ACT Regional Group (BASNA), as a co-founder of the Birds in Backyards program and as Chair of its Steering Committee since 1998. She was elected to the Birds Australia Council in 2007.

Dr David M Watson, Councillor
David is a senior lecturer in ecology and ornithology at Charles Sturt University, and coordinator of the ornithology courses. With degrees from Monash University and the University of Kansas in the USA, his research program spans the disciplines of community ecology and biogeography. In addition to empirical studies ranging from cloud-forests of southern Mexico to shrublands in central Australia, he has made numerous theoretical contributions, including a new conceptual framework for studying fragmented landscapes, and the proposal that mistletoe represents a keystone resource in forests and woodlands throughout the world. Dave lives with his family on a property north of Albury, and is committed to raising public awareness about biodiversity and long-term conservation management.
    
Dr Justin Watson, Councillor
Justin was born in South Africa and moved to Brisbane with his young family in 2000. He has been birdwatching for about 25 years and was active in numerous ornithological and other wildlife organisations in southern Africa. He is a professional ecologist with specific interest that include ornithological conservation, urban biodiversity and restoration ecology. His formal ornithological research and training includes studies into avian seed dispersal; coastal bird breeding biology, management and conservation; impacts of hunting on gamebirds; birds as bioindicators; and species translocation. He was part of the inaugural BA Southern Queensland Regional Group Committee and as a BA Councillor he aims to provide fresh ideas to bird conservation and management in Australia; to ensure the interest of members from all States are accommodated; and to integrate members with BA activities.

Dr Robert Davis, Councillor
Robert is a research associate in zoology at the University of Western Australia. He has served on the committee of Birds Australia (WA) for nearly a decade and was convenor of the WA group from 2005-2008. He completed a PhD focussed on the population biology and ecology of a frog species in the highly fragmented and salinising wheatbelt region of Western Australia. For the past two years he has been working on an NHT-funded project with the Swan Catchment Council, investigating the impacts of urbanisation on Perth's avifauna. Robert also spent almost a decade as a fauna consultant during his studies and has his own fauna consulting business that his partner now runs. He has ongoing research interests on the use of revegetation by birds in agricultural regions and as a qualified bird bander has been studying the importance of urban bushland to birds in Perth, for the past 8 years. Robert spent six years as an inaugural board member of the Society for Conservation Biology (Australasian Section) and also serves on the Swan Catchment Council's Natural Diversity Reference Group. He is a passionate conservation biologist with a long-running interest in Carnaby's Black-Cockatoo. He has inputted into the management of the Birds Australia Carnaby's Black-Cockatoo Recovery project for the past four years and sits on the Carnaby's Black-Cockatoo Recovery Team and the Birds Australia Project Advisory Group for Carnaby's Black-Cockatoo as well as the Birds Australia WA Conservation and Research Sub-committee.

Prof Max Finlayson, Councillor
Dr Max Finlayson is Professor for Ecology and Biodiversity and Director of the Institute for Land, Water and Society at Charles Sturt University in the Murray-Darling Basin in south-eastern Australia. He attended the University of Western Australia (Perth) and James Cook University (Townsville) and began his research career with CSIRO in the Murray-Darling Basin before going to Kakadu National Park in northern Australia. He then went to the UK to join what is now known as Wetlands International with projects in Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean and eastern Africa; moved back to northern Australia to establish a tropical wetland research program; left Australia again and joined the International Water Management Institute in Sri Lanka with field projects in southern Africa; and late in 2007 joined Charles Sturt University. He is a wetland ecologist experienced with water pollution, mining and agricultural impacts, invasive species, climate change, and human wellbeing and wetlands. He has participated in global assessments such as those conducted by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, and the Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture. His work has taken him to many countries in Europe, Asia and Africa. Since the early 1990s he has been a technical advisor to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands and for 6 years chaired the governing council of Wetlands International. He has written extensively on wetland ecology and management and has long been an advocate of local community and indigenous peoples' involvement in wetland and river management and investigations. And yes, he does enjoy bird watching and, except when cycling, loves the antics of the Australian magpie.