David Lindenmayer
Professor
BSc, DipEd, PhD, DSc, FAA, AO
email david.lindenmayer@anu.edu.au
call +61 2 612 50654
link ANU Researcher Portal profile

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About

Professor David Lindenmayer is a world-leading expert in forest ecology and resource management, conservation science, and biodiversity conservation. He currently runs 5 large-scale, long-term research programs in south-eastern Australia, primarily associated with developing ways to conserve biodiversity in farmland, wood production forests, plantations, and reserves. He has maintained some of the largest, long-term research programs in Australia, with some exceeding 42 years in duration.

Professor Lindenmayer has published more than 1442 scientific works, including 943 peer-reviewed papers in international scientific journals. He has also published 49 books, including many award winning textbooks and other seminal books. Furthermore, David is among the world's most productive and most highly-cited scientists, particularly in forest ecology and conservation biology. He has a Google Scholar H-Index of 152 with a total of 96,820 citations as of June 2024. He was included in the 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2015, and 2014 Clarivate Highly Cited Lists. Between 2004 and 2024, David Lindenmayer was listed among the top 2000 Highly Cited Researchers (h>100) according to Google Scholar Citations public profiles across all disciplines. In 2017 he was listed in the top 50 Australian scientists across all disciplines. Professor Lindenmayer is a member of an elite group of 0.5% of scientists globally that have published >10 peer-reviewed scientific articles in international journals annually each year for the past decade. In 2020, 2021 and 2022, The Australian newspaper listed the 30 leading Australian scientists, and Lindenmayer was listed as the leading conservation and biodiversity expert in the nation.

Professor Lindenmayer held a prestigious Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow from 2013-2018. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (elected 2008), a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America (elected in 2019), Fellow of the Royal Zoological Society, Fellow of the American Academy of Science, and was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 2014. His research has been recognised through numerous awards, including the Eureka Science Prize (three times), Whitley Award (10 times), the Serventy Medal for Ornithology, and the Australian Natural History Medallion. In 2018, he was awarded the prestigious Whittaker Medal from the Ecological Society of America. In 2022 he was elected a a Fellow of the NSW Royal Zoological Society.

Professor Lindenmayer has recently published an important book - The Forest Wars: The ugly truth about what's happening in our tall forests. This book lifts the lid on the destruction of native forests by government corporations and logging industry that is making bushfires worse, killing wildlife and costing taxpayers millions, for the sake of exported woodchips.

Affiliations

Research interests

Landscape restoration and remnant native vegetation

  • A major restoration experiment in the Riverina and western Murray regions of southern Australia – studies of birds, small mammals, frogs, reptiles and arboreal marsupials.
  • Tests of the applicability of the focal species and other surrogate approaches in restoration

Integrated forest use, wildlife conservation and ecologically sustainability

  • The ontogeny and process of the development of cavities in ash-type eucalypt trees and its implications for the conservation of hollow-dependent fauna.
  • The importance of forest structure in ecologically sustainable forestry
  • The impact of forest fragmentation on forest fauna inhabiting intensively-used wood production areas.
  • Integration of resource economic analysis and ecological data to assess the efficacy of various forest management options.
  • Performance measures for models of wildlife habitat and nest tree suitability.
  • Genetic variability, dispersal behaviour, metapopulation dynamics, forest fragmentation and the conservation of mammals.
  • The effects of clearfelling practices on the development of policies for the ecologically sustainable use of forest resources.
  • The value for generic models for integrating wildlife conservation and timber harvesting.
  • Associations of species of arboreal marsupials and the use of management indicator species in forest conservation.
  • Morphometric, genetic and parasitological changes along a latitudinal gradient in the Mountain Brushtail Possum.

Habitat fragmentation and retained systems in wood production forests

  • Major fragmentation natural experiments in the Tumut and Nanangroe regions of southern Australia – studies of birds, small mammals, frogs, weeds, reptiles and arboreal marsupials.
  • The importance of systems of retained vegetation for the conservation of forest vertebrate fauna.
  • Distribution and abundance of birds, small mammals & arboreal marsupials in habitat fragments.
  • Edge effects and its impacts on the deterioration of retained systems in timber production forests.

Sampling methodology for forest vertebrates

  • Comparisons of sampling methods for birds, arboreal marsupials and small mammals.

Species responses to vegetation types and ecological burning practices

  • Major ecological burning and vegetation type response study – for vertebrates (mammals, birds and reptiles) at Booderee National Park, Jervis Bay Territory, south-eastern Australia
  • Major studies of post-fire ecological recovery following major wildfires in Victorian in 2009 – builds upon 30 years of past research in the montane ash forests of the Central Highlands of Victoria

 Re-introduction biology

  • The application of simulation and other modelling approaches in captive breeding and reintroduction.
  • The role and importance of disease in reintroduction biology and captive breeding programs.

Projects

Location

Frank Fenner Building (141)

Publications