Brendan Wintle
Brendan Wintle uses quantitative ecology to show how biodiversity conservation decisions play out under real-world constraints of land, money and risk, linking species science directly to policy and budgets. His work for The Conversation and other outlets focuses on threatened species, ecosystem restoration and the costs of averting extinctions, making complex trade-offs legible to non-specialist audiences. He combines modelling, field ecology and conservation economics, and his coverage consistently turns technical research into clear, decision-focused analysis.
He is a professor of biodiversity conservation and director of the Melbourne Biodiversity Institute at the University of Melbourne, and he is a principal investigator in the Quantitative and Applied Ecology group. His broader research portfolio covers biodiversity assessment, monitoring and reporting design, cost-efficient conservation spending, and species loss under environmental change. Conference and keynote biographies describe him as a global leader in conservation ecology and ecological modelling research toward species conservation.
Threatened species and extinction risk
Threatened species are a core through-line: he repeatedly examines how individual species and whole groups face extinction risk, and what it would take to secure them.
In work on spending to halt an extinction crisis, he quantifies the financial requirements to prevent further losses, framing conservation as a national-scale investment decision rather than a series of isolated projects. Across this material, he stresses population viability analysis, habitat modelling and systematic conservation planning as the basis for prioritising which species and places receive scarce resources.
His coverage highlights that small and isolated habitat patches can be crucial to species survival, challenging assumptions that only large, contiguous reserves matter. Research he leads shows that patches under roughly 1,000 hectares can hold unique terrestrial species and high conservation value, yet are often overlooked in planning and funding.
In his public-facing work, these findings translate into arguments for more nuanced protection strategies that recognise the importance of fragmented landscapes for threatened species.
He also draws on experience directing a national threatened species recovery hub, using that vantage point to connect individual case studies to system-level questions about governance and effectiveness. That role feeds into his journalism and commentary, where threatened birds, arboreal marsupials and other vulnerable taxa become examples of broader structural issues in conservation policy and implementation.
Restoration, land use and conservation spending
A second strand of his work deals with ecosystem restoration at scale, especially the financial and logistical demands of meeting ambitious nature-recovery pledges. In coverage of a national commitment to restore degraded land, he sets out what restoring 30% of such land would involve across private properties, public reserves and Indigenous estates, and presents a ballpark cost of a little over A$7 billion per year over 30 years. The analysis makes restoration targets tangible, framing them in terms of decades-long programs, jurisdictional coordination and sustained investment rather than aspirational slogans.
His research on fractional land use change models for ecological applications provides the technical backbone for these stories, offering ways to predict how shifts in land use affect habitats and species over time.
He regularly writes about cost-efficient conservation spending, using modelling to identify where funds deliver the greatest biodiversity gains and how to balance restoration with protection of existing high-value sites. This emphasis on economics and land use sets his coverage apart from more descriptive nature writing, positioning conservation as a series of explicit trade-offs that can be optimised.
Fire, climate shocks and wildlife impacts
Major fire events and climate-driven shocks form another recurring focus, where he asks what happens to wildlife and habitats after extreme disturbance and how recovery should be managed. In work on megafires and their aftermath, he examines the scale of ecological damage and outlines priorities for monitoring, habitat protection and species recovery in burned landscapes. This is complemented by analysis of how limited human perception - such as only seeing a few kilometres into the distance - can lead people to underestimate the true extent of bushfire destruction.
His articles show that firefighting strategies often neglect critical natural habitats, raising concerns about whether vulnerable species can compete for resources against homes and farmland during emergencies. He advocates for better coordination of conservation initiatives before, during and after fires, drawing on quantitative assessments of habitat loss and species responses to guide where and how to intervene.
The overall tone is pragmatic: he treats fire and climate extremes as recurrent features of conservation planning, not anomalies, and writes about them in terms of risk management and resilience.
Human–nature interactions and conservation communication
He also pays close attention to how human behaviour shapes nature, and how conservation messages are framed for the public and decision-makers. In analysis of how nature responds when humans stay indoors during a pandemic, he explores shifts in wildlife activity and the visibility of animals when human disturbance drops, using this period as a natural experiment in human–nature interactions. The article links everyday changes - such as quieter streets and reduced travel - to broader questions about how much human pressure ecosystems can tolerate.
His co-authored work on climate and environmental emergency argues for a humanities approach, including a critique of ecosystem services as a communication strategy that asks what nature can do for people. That critique feeds into his broader communication style, which tends to frame biodiversity as something with intrinsic value and complex relationships, not simply a provider of services. Across outlets, he combines technical detail with clear, direct language, making it possible for readers to understand both the science and the ethical stakes of conservation decisions.
Taken together, his coverage is distinguished by its integration of ecological modelling, economic analysis and policy insight, applied to real species, real places and real budgets. He writes in a restrained, evidence-led way, foregrounding numbers, uncertainty and trade-offs while keeping the focus on what different choices mean for biodiversity over the long term.
4 more environment journalists.
Adelaide Lang
Adelaide Lang combines climate reporting with courtroom and Indigenous-focused journalism. She reports for The Daily Telegraph, with work also appearing in The Canberra Times, and contributes guest pieces to National Indigenous Times. Her environment coverage focuses on climate-threatened islands, community resilience and how policy decisions affect people facing direct environmental risks. She follows local campaigns, adaptation efforts and political pressure while keeping the human effects clear. Lang also covers court proceedings involving public officials, including the trial of State MP Gareth Ward over historical sexual and indecent assault charges. Her reporting examines how allegations are tested in court and how the justice system handles accusations against people in power. With more than five years in digital media and courtroom reporting, she writes clear, factual accounts of events, legal processes and their consequences.
Ashleigh McMillan
Ashleigh McMillan is a breaking news reporter at The Age. She stands out for covering the environment through public events, infrastructure and everyday city life. Her reporting tracks how protests, policy decisions and sudden incidents change routines, public safety and the spaces people move through. She covers fast-moving stories across Victoria, with a focus on community tension, access and the lived effects of official decisions. Her work includes protests and public demonstrations, crime and courts, transport and ticketing changes, traffic experiments, weather, and environmental conditions in the city. She reports on what people see and feel on the ground, with attention to victims, commuters, residents and the practical consequences of legal and infrastructure decisions.
Bareket Falk
Bareket Falk uses environmental stories to show how growing bodies handle physical stress, especially heat, during exercise. She is a pediatric exercise physiologist and kinesiology professor whose work focuses on how children, adolescents and adults respond to activity across growth and development. She writes evidence-led explainers for The Conversation that test assumptions about children’s vulnerability and turn decades of exercise science into clear, practical guidance. Her core piece looks at how children and adults cope with extreme heat, walking through basic thermoregulation and challenging the idea that children are automatically more fragile. Her journalism draws directly on research into blood flow, sweating, body size and growth, keeping technical detail tight and translating findings into concrete behaviours such as pacing activity, seeking shade and hydration. She is interested in how physical activity interacts with maturation, body composition and recovery, and uses data to check myths about kids’ risk.
Bec Lorrimer
Bec Lorrimer is a visual journalist and picture editor who tells environment stories through photography and careful image selection at the Guardian. She works at the intersection of climate coverage and visual editing, using picture-led formats to show how global heating and other environmental pressures play out in everyday life. Her environment beat centres on picture galleries that track the lived experience of climate extremes, including record high temperatures in South Korea, with in pictures sequences that foreground the scale of global heating over text-led analysis. She also contributes to monthly roundups of the strongest photos and human-centred features such as a nursing home story, focusing on people and places under pressure. As a global visual editor and assistant picture editor on international fronts, she selects images across environment, politics, culture and general news, drawing on her background as a photographer, video director and photo producer.