RSWA End of Year Celebration

Join RSWA at the Indian Ocean Marine Research Centre Auditorium, and celebrate the end of 2025 with us!

RSWA End of Year Celebration

Join us for an awesome chance to wrap up the year together in person! It’s all about good vibes, great company, and celebrating achievements.

Featuring an exciting line up:

• Special guest speaker Professor Nicki Mitchell, Deputy Director of the UWA Oceans Institute, who will discuss "Conserving biodiversity as the climate changes - what can be done, and should we be doing it?"
• John Glover Research Support Grant 2026 recipients will be formally announced.
• Snacks, drinks, and networking!

Conserving biodiversity as the climate changes - what can be done, and should we be doing it?

Anthropogenic climate change is disrupting ecosystems worldwide and driving species toward extinction at an accelerating pace. While targeted conservation interventions could prevent many of these extinctions, policy and philosophical barriers may undermine our willingness to deploy them. This talk presents three climate change adaptation strategies developed and tested for animal species in Western Australia, where rapid aridification and increasing temperatures are transforming their habitats. Through case studies involving threatened reptiles and amphibians, I demonstrate that interventions grounded in solid understanding of species' physiological tolerances and plasticity show genuine promise for success. Yet our hesitancy to intervene and perceptions of risk remain a fundamental constraint on action. The irony is strong—humans irrevocably impact species and ecosystems for less noble purposes, from agriculture to mining to urban sprawl. Will we prove pragmatic enough to assist species in surviving the climate crisis we have created, or will our paralysis delay action until it is too late?