1 Million Turtles Community Conservation Program
Meet the Team
Dr James Van Dyke
Van is a Senior Lecturer from La Trobe University in Victoria and is the 1 Million Turtles Program Lead and the contact person for both national and VIC enquiries.
He is an integrative biologist who researches vertebrate reproduction to answer big questions in conservation and evolution. He has studied turtle nesting and reproductive ecology for over 10 years to determine how threats like invasive predators, pollution, and climate change affect turtle hatching success.
Associate Professor Ricky Spencer
Ricky is an Associate Professor from Western Sydney University and the Co-Program Lead and the contact person for both national and NSW enquiries.
Ricky is also the manager of TurtleSAT and actively strives for active engagement with communities and management agencies to ensure best practice research is integrated to its full potential.
Dr Deborah Bower
Deb is a Conservation Biologist and head of the Laboratory of Applied Zoology and Ecosystem Restoration (LAZER) in School of Environmental and Rural Science and University of New England. She is a program team member and the contact person for enquiries from Armidale NSW. She is also currently writing a children's book to raise awareness about turtle conservation.
Prof Mike Thompson
Professor Mike Thompson is an emeritus professor from the University of Sydney. Mike has been at the forefront of turtle biology research in Australia since the "80s". He produced the first publication demonstrating that Australian Turtles were at risk due to predation by foxes and he is the face of turtle conservation in South Australia.
Program Team Member and the contact person for enquiries from South Australia and parts of Victoria.
Anthony Santoro, PhD Candidate
Anthony Santoro is contact person for all enquiries from Western Australia.
His current Ph.D. research seeks to identify how stressors such as climate change and urbanisation affect the survivorship, recruitment and population viability of C. oblonga in Perth’s urban wetlands.
Anthony enjoys using a mixture of field observations, tracking technologies and modelling to answer applied conservation ecology questions.
Dr Donald McKnight
Dr. Donald McKnight is a postdoctoral researcher at James Cook University. He has been studying turtle conservation and ecology around the world for over a decade and uses a combination of field-based monitoring and molecular research to understand these fascinating creatures.
Dr Sylvia Clarke
Dr. Sylvia Clarke is the Senior Project Officer for Citizen Science with the Murraylands and Riverland Landscape Board in South Australia. She has a background in ecology, natural resource management and science communication. She currently coordinates a number of citizen science projects that engage the community in being actively involved in increasing the collective understanding of the region and its waterways.
Geetha Ortac
Geetha is the founder of Project Checkpoint and worked previously with the Saving our Species program based in NSW. She is a project management and evaluation professional and has designed and delivered more than 20 citizen science and conservation projects both in Australia and internationally over the last 9 years. Geetha is currently assisting with program management and coordination tasks.
Courtney Monk
Courtney is a Wetland Project Officer with the Murraylands and Riverland Landscape Board and provides additional support to the 1 Million Turtles Program Team.
Dr Jenna Condie
Jenna Condie is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Society in the School of Social Sciences and a Research Fellow for the Young and Resilient Research Centre at Western Sydney University. Jenna’s research focuses on building communities for social change and the role of social media for instigating action. As an experienced qualitative researcher, she uses research methods that are participatory, creative, activist and digital. Jenna co-edited ‘Doing Research In and On the Digital: Research Methods Across Fields of Inquiry’ (2018, Routledge) and has published on new materialist and scholar-activist approaches to researching with responsibility and care for communities and planet.
Dr Willem Roosenburg
Willem has been researching conservation and ecology for more that 30 years. Willem is a professor at Ohio University and has created TERP (Terrapin Education and Research Partnership), which integrates K-12 environmental education and literacy with conservation science to both enhance awareness and evaluate the effectiveness of conservation / management strategies.
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