Wildlife Conservation experts

Dr Amanda Hodgson

Marine mammal monitoring; dugong behavior; the impacts of boats on marine mammals

Dr Hodgson is conducting Australia’s first trials of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for surveying marine mammal populations. Her research focuses on dugongs and humpback whales and she aims to develop methods for using UAVs to assess marine mammal abundance and distribution.

She has previously used the ‘blimp-cam’ to study dugong behavior and her research provided evidence of the vulnerability of dugongs to boat disturbance and boat strikes. She also investigated the potential for ‘pingers’ or acoustic alarms designed to reduce marine mammal entanglement in nets.

Dr Kris Warren

Conservation medicine

An expert in wildlife, avian and exotic pet medicine, Dr Kris Warren is a senior lecturer and program chair in conservation medicine at Murdoch University.

She has worked as a veterinarian and researcher on an orang-utan re-introduction project in East Kalimantan, and conducted molecular research into infectious diseases and population genetics of Borneo orang-utans.

Dr Warren is currently developing recovery initiatives for endangered species.

Dr Hugh Finn

Wildlife conservation, conservation biology

Dr Hugh Finn is a post-doctoral fellow at Murdoch University research focus on black-cockatoos and bottlenose dolphins. He became involved with dolphins in the Swan River through his PhD research in Cockburn Sound and the Swan River from 2000-3.

He is also involved with Dolphin Watch, a collaborative project with the Swan River Trust and Curtin University in which community volunteers record observations of dolphins within the Swan Canning Riverpark.

His current research is examining the ecology of black-cockatoos in the Jarrah Forest and the Swan Coastal Plain.

Dr Lars Bejder

Impact of tourism on whales and dolphins

Dr Lars Bejder leads the world’s largest study into the impact of tourism on whales and dolphins, and Murdoch’s Cetacean Research Unit.

His research on the impact of whale watching in Shark Bay led to the Western Australian Government’s decision to decrease the number of licensed dolphin watching tour operators in the state to ensure sustainability.

Dr Bejder’s research is also helping the Hawaiian State Government in the US to create legislation protecting their native dolphins from the impact of tourism.