Enabling Biodiversity Inclusive Design
In the day and age of the biodiversity emergency, architects, landscape architects, urban designers and even engineers are looking for answers to the question “How do we design for biodiversity?”. The ‘Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework’ specifically calls for the rise of biodiversity inclusive urban areas (See Target 12, Convention on Biological Diversity 2022). Biodiversity Inclusive […]
Integrating biodiversity as a non-human stakeholder within urban development.
We call this, biodiversity inclusive design. Check out our paper for more information! References
Examining connection to nature at multiple scales provides insights for urban conservation
New research into Melburnians’ connection to nature is helping the City of Melbourne understand how to engage its community members in conservation efforts. The study, led by RMIT University in collaboration with the City of Melbourne and Queensland University of Technology, surveyed over 1,500 City of Melbourne residents and visitors on their connection to nature and found […]
Biodiversity conservation cannot afford COVID-19 communication bungles
As COVID-19 continues to dominate our lives and media headlines, maintaining public engagement with biodiversity conservation can be a communication challenge. This media context can make it tempting for conservation professionals like us to draw links or parallels between the pandemic and the biodiversity crisis, with the intention to make stories about biodiversity more relevant […]
Feral Cat Control in Australia – 5-year report
Read the full report here. Since 2015, members of ICON Science have been working with the Office of the Threatened Species Commissioner to assess the national management of feral cats across Australia. This work is part of the wider Threatened Species Strategy, and recognises the significant threat to Australia’s native species that is posed by […]
ICON tells Victoria’s Parliament to ‘walk the walk’ on urban greening
The ICON Science group has submitted our response to the Parliament of Victoria’s ‘Inquiry into Environmental Infrastructure for Growing Populations’. Our city has grown rapidly – has our access to nature kept up? It’s commendable that our leaders have turned their minds to this topic, as COVID-19 has reminded us of the enormous importance of […]
Australia’s Urban Biodiversity: How Is Adaptive Governance Influencing Land-Use Policy?
By Hugh Stanford Image: John Englart / CC BY-SA 2.0 Due to a growing global interconnectedness, the world is a highly uncertain place where the daily lives of individuals are increasingly susceptible to the happenings half a world away. To find examples of this, one only has to look at Australia’s current run through 2020, where […]
What difference do protected areas make on vegetation extent and condition?
Logging road in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Photo by Roshan Sharma. Biodiversity is the variety of all life forms on Earth and underpins the health of our planet. It provides important ecosystem services like food and fibre that are the basis of human existence. However, exploitative human activities on Earth have created an unprecedented breakdown of […]
Trees are hot news this year
First it was the hopeful-but-questionable ‘One Trillion Trees’ initiative, announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos, with supporters as diverse as Jane Goodall and Donald Trump. At the same time, large areas of Australia were on fire – in total, estimates are that we lost 20% of our forest cover in the climate-change-driven ‘Black […]
Supporting the long-term stewardship of privately protected areas
Thousands of rural landholders across Australia have entered into permanent conservation agreements to protect Australia’s unique flora and fauna. By turning their properties into privately protected areas (PPA), landholders are providing stewardship of our natural heritage that benefits society. But how can we as a society better support these landholders? Lab members Matthew Selinske, Mat […]
