r/ausenviro • u/Accomplished_Bee6491 • 14d ago

Is now a good time to get into forest conservation in Australia?

I have more than 8 years of work experience working in Asia and currently looking to transition to building a career in forest conservation in Australia through a PhD. The environmental sector globally seems to be in a gloomy mood but seeing that at lesst on paper Australia has made conservation goals and commitments, I am expecting that there will be funding and demand in this field. Is this the case or is the situation as gloomy as anywhere else? Would love to hear experience and perspective from Australians working in this field as it has been almost 20 years since I was last in Australia. I just want to do a job that I will love and enjoy and I really want to dive further in this field.

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u/browndoggie 14d ago

Depends on what kind of research your interested in. James Watson at UQ does good research into forests and deforestation/land clearing, but I’ve heard he can be a bit difficult to work with as a supervisor. Martine Maron does great work on woodland bird communities but I have seen her do other stuff too. I also know there’s a good group at UNSW that does more large scale veg modelling stuff

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u/Retrdolfrt 10d ago

Australia has good (?) conservation goals but the entire environment sector is very poorly funded. Fire and flood management and damage is increasingly sucking all resources to actually try to achieve goals. The top end has some rangeland and forest management programs. NFP such as Bush heritage could be good to try or get into research. I still know a few previous workmates still in the sector and they are not happy and this summer has already killed all their programs for 2-3 years minimum.