Bruce Lindenmayer Memorial Lecture

Distinguished Professor David Lindenmayer speaks on 'Re-imagining fire in the land of fire'

Australia is the most fire-prone continent on earth. The relationship between fire, fire management, fire risks and biodiversity is complex, and often poorly understood by the majority of Australians. Many of the opinions on fire in the media and populist literature are ill-informed. Some actions like logging, thinning and even prescribed burning can actually make some Australian ecosystems more flammable. They can also alter fire regimes – or the sequence of fires in an area – with profound long-term negative impacts on biodiversity and the integrity of ecosystems.

This talk discusses new insights into the ecology and management of wildfire and other kinds of fire in Australian landscapes. It charts a new path towards better understanding fire and its management in the land of fire.

This special Memorial Lecture will be held on Thursday, 5 February 2026 at 6pm in Manning Clark Hall, Lowitja O’Donoghue Cultural Centre, ANU. Bookings are free but essential, and are now open.

Bruce Lindenmayer OAM was a highly dedicated environmentalist, conservationist and ornithologist, and a member of the Friends of the ANBG for fourteen years. Read about his life and legacy.

Biography

Distinguished Professor David Lindenmayer, AO FAA, is a world-leading expert in forest and woodland ecology, resource management, conservation science, and biodiversity conservation. He has maintained some of the largest, long-term research programs in Australia, with some exceeding 42 years in duration. He is among the world's most productive and most highly-cited scientists, particularly in forest ecology and conservation biology and has published more than 1550 scientific articles including 990 peer-reviewed papers in international scientific journals. He has also published 50 books, including many award-winning textbooks and other seminal books. David Lindenmayer held a prestigious Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship from 2013-2018, where he worked on biodiversity indices, metrics and proxies. 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 of NSW (elected 2022), and Fellow of the American Academy of Sciences (elected 2023). He 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, the Ellis Troughton Medal for contributions to Mammalogy, and the Australian Natural History Medallion. In 2018, he was awarded the prestigious Whittaker Medal from the Ecological Society of America. He was awarded the Macfarlane Burnett Medal for Life Sciences by the Australian Academy of Sciences in 2024.

Booking link: https://www.trybooking.com/DHLPY

Booking

This special Memorial Lecture will be held at 6pm in Manning Clark Hall, Lowitja O’Donoghue Cultural Centre, Australian National University. Bookings open 15 December and close the night before the talk or when seating limits are reached. (Tickets are free but a donation on entry will be accepted.) 

Car Park: Kingsley Street, Acton. Drive down ramp at the end of Kingsley Street. Fee $6.20 for arrivals after 5pm.

Please reserve a seat at this talk if you wish to attend.  Bookings open 15 December and close the night before the talk, or when seating limits are reached. (Tickets are free but a donation on entry will be accepted.)