David has a diverse research career commencing in 1980 conducting an Honours project on long term grassland and shrubland dynamics across the coastal hills of Southern California. This led to an interest in herbivory and digestion applied to MSc research on nutrition in farmed red deer (Lincoln University, NZ), and a PhD on the digestive physiology of kangaroos and goats (UNE, Armidale, NSW), followed by a post-doc back in NZ on the seasonality of gut function and metabolism in red deer (Massey Uni). To get myself out of the lab and animal house, I joined CSIRO Wildlife and Ecology in 1991 to conduct grazing management research in the rangelands of eastern Australia which built on my expertise in kangaroos and goats. By 2000, CSIRO shifted research focus from eastern rangelands to agricultural landscapes dominated by woodlands. This led me to research on the impact of landscape fragmentation on woodland bird assemblages and other taxa. In such highly cleared landscapes restoration is a priority, so I led a number of research projects on the ecosystem services derived from government supported native plantings in southern NSW. This research put me in contact with the NGO, Greening Australia, which I joined in 2007 as Chief Scientist. There my collaborative research projects included effectiveness and cost of revegetation technologies, carbon sequestration measurement and modelling, biofuels from native species, and the benefits of biochar application for improving restoration effectiveness. I joined the Fenner School in 2012 to continue my current research in applied restoration practice and lecture in management of forested landscapes. I'm currently an Honorary Senior Lecturer with the Fenner School and a Board member of the NSW Biodiversity Conservation Trust