Eldridge, David John   (fl. 1970s - 2010s)

Born:

David Eldridge is a Professor in the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of NSW. His research aims to understand more about the impacts of human-induced land uses in drylands, and the links between land-use change and environmental change.

David holds an adjunct position at UNSW under a MOU between UNSW and the New South Wales Office of Environment and Heritage, where he is a Senior Principal Research Scientist. Over the past 15 years he has worked on high-profile research projects on the impacts of livestock grazing in NSW conservation reserves, the effects of feral horses on ecosystem processes, and the impacts of woody plant encroachment on the ecology of semiarid woodlands.

Obtained a BSc, University of Sydney 1973-77
MSc Ecology, Macquarie University 1987-88
PhD Ecology, Macquarie University 1992-94

"In 1991 I had been working with the NSW Soil Conservation Service for just over a decade, had spent a year in North Africa with the World Bank, and had just started a PhD. A federal government grant allowed me to start a four-year study of the ecology and management of biocrusts (cryptogams). This work took me all over the world, to Maralinga to investigate how biocrusts could stabilise nuclear waste dumps, and to run landholder (and ANPC) workshops all around Australia. The early 1990s was a period of personal freedom, when governments placed more emphasis on science and scientific freedom, allowing us to pursue research agendas that we believed were important.

"Without this freedom, substantial ecological research would never have happened. We were also trusted to engage with the media, unlike today when everything is managed. I had stints on Totally Wild and Burke's Backyard, and a trip to the Great Victoria Desert to record Australia All Over. Senior managers in my agency allowed me to work in a university environment, which was beneficial to everyone. A major legacy of those working in the late 1980s and early 1990s was that we amassed a huge repository of ecological data. With new statistical methods, and faster computers, we are only now realising the true economic and ecological value of these large datasets that tell us so much about the health of Australia's ecosystems nearly half a century ago."

Source: Extracted from:
https://www.bees.unsw.edu.au/our-people/david-eldridge
Australasian Plant Conservation, Vol.30, No.3, Feb 2022 p.8
https://au.linkedin.com/in/david-eldridge-11ba22ba
Portrait Photo: Extracted from: web, Dr David John Eldridge, UNSW Research research.unsw.edu.au.

Collecting localities for 'Eldridge, D.J.' from AVH (2022)

Data from 2,810 specimens