School of Environmental Sciences
Gill Earl
BSc Monash, BSc(Hons) JCU
Campus Thurgoona Campus
Office PhD Room, School of Environmental Sciences
Phone (02) 6051 9839
EMAIL GILL EARL 
Student Member of ILWS
I have a long history of working for the Victorian government to protect rare and threatened plants, mostly on public land. In rural Australia, where over 60% of the land mas is privately managed, effective biodiversity conservation will only happen if landholders are willing managers of the valuable biodiversity on their properties. Measures that have been employed to date have had some success, but there are still important assets at risk, and major conflicts between farmers and governments about biodiversity management. A duty of care has been proposed as a positive mechanism for addressing biodiversity conservation on private land, although there is a lack of clarity about what it means, and how it might be applied. My thesis is exploring these questions through a series of case studies, asking local landholders and other community representatives their views about fair and reasonable standards of care for biodiversity, and who should be responsible for this care. In doing so, I hope to articulate a framework for a duty of care for biodiversity that can be put into practice at a local catchment scale. A duty of care for biodiversity offers the prospect of lasting protection and active management for biodiversity, and resolution of the vexing question about who is responsible for biodiversity conservation on private land.
Thesis topic
Can we apply a duty of care to improve biodiversity management at a regional scale?
Supervisors