University of Sydney
Research Field: Conservation Science
Australia is becoming known for its abysmal conservation record, with hundreds of species declining due to clearing of native vegetation and changes to natural processes. Conservation budgets are limited, so we need targeted management actions that can recover native ecosystems and species.
Dr Tulloch tackles this challenge by building decision-support tools for allocating effort to species and ecosystem recovery and designing indicators that help monitor whether efforts are working. By using these tools, land managers can maximize benefits to ecosystems whilst accounting for significant environmental changes and socio-economic challenges. This approach has been applied to controlling invasive predators and recovering ecological communities from changed fire regimes.
Ayesha is passionate about helping people learn more about science and our impacts on nature through Citizen Science and SciArt. She helped create Australia’s first Threatened Species Index, which tracks changes in Australia’s plant and animal populations (www.tsx.org.au).
She helped drive eBird Australia, a global citizen science platform (https://ebird.org/australia/about), and is featured in The Conversation, Radio National, BBC TV.
Dr Tulloch completed her PhD in 2013 at the University of Queensland. She is currently a Senior Applied Ecologist with QUT and Bush Heritage Australia.