Professor Brendan Wintle, Director of the Melbourne Biodiversity Institute, University of Melbourne

Brendan Wintle is Professor in Biodiversity Conservation and Director of the Melbourne Biodiversity Institute at the University of Melbourne. He develops economic methods to support conservation decisions and policy.

He has been Director of Australia’s Threatened Species Recovery Research Hub and UN IPBES coordinating lead author. He teaches Applied Ecology, Global Environmental Change, and 1st year Biology. He serves on the Zoos Victoria Board and was recently elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Victoria. He publishes on biodiversity assessment, monitoring and reporting design, cost-efficient conservation spending, and species loss under environmental change.

He has held an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship and was theme leader of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions. He is a Lead Councillor on Australia’s Biodiversity Council.

He harbours strange obsessions with a gliding marsupial called the greater glider, spider orchids, playing football (with a round ball), and watching Tigers play the ovoid ball version. He once met the Queen and Michael Parkinson in the same week, but was too polite to admit he was a republican.