Associate Professor Martin Breed (left) and Dr Sacha Jellinek (University of Melbourne) (right)
With Associate Professor Martin Breed and Dr Sacha Jellinek, the Landscape Revegetation project is in great hands.
Project Lead Martin is a scholar of restoration ecology (the science of repairing ecosystems), ecosystem health, and genomics at Flinders University. He has worked with both the United Nations and the World Health Organisation.
“My contributions to monitoring soil biodiversity, repairing soil ecosystems, climate-resilient restoration and ecosystem health are widely recognised” says Martin, two-time winner of the Bradshaw Medal from the international Society for Ecological Restoration
(nature repair’s global peak body) for contributions to repairing soil ecosystems.
“I lead a team that collaborates closely with end users, management agencies, policymakers, and innovators at local, national, and international scales. Our work is reshaping the practices and policies of how we monitor and repair ecosystems” he says.
Project team member Dr Sacha Jellinek, a Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne, was originally employed on the CLLMM Recovery Project who worked on the revegetation strategy and worked closely with First Nations groups and local organisations to deliver the plantings. Sacha is passionate about the links between people and nature and identifying the best ways to monitor and restore natural ecosystems. His knowledge of the past revegetation and surveying efforts in the CLLMM region is vital to the success of the project as is his interest in how revegetation will be impacted into future.
He said “plant species are differently affected by a changing climate so it is hoped that this study will show which species are most resilient to a changing climate, and which species require assistance to survive and grow. It will also show how revegetated areas might be able
to assist local landholders and farming landscapes”.