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The D.L. Serventy Medal may be awarded annually for outstanding published work on birds in the Australasian region. It has been awarded for the last 15 years and is the highest award offered to professional ornithologists by Birds Australia.
2009 Serventy Medallist
Dr Carla Catterall is an Associate Professor of Ecology at Griffith University. Her career spans over 30 years of research and teaching in environmental science. Her research has ranged from elegant studies of the behavioural ecology of single species (in particular the Silvereye Zosterops lateralis) to broader studies of key ecological processes that have profound implications for ecological restoration, like frugivory and interspecific aggression (particularly by Noisy Miners Manorina melanocephala).
With colleagues and students, her research has centred on habitat use and patterns or processes of ecosystem change in space and time. This encompasses areas such as conservation biology, landscape ecology, ecological restoration, vegetation management, conservation planning, environmental impact assessment, and ecological monitoring. Within these contexts, birds have always been a special area of interest, but she has also applied her considerable intellect to the study of a diversity of taxonomic groups. Furthermore, her ecological expertise spans terrestrial, riparian and coastal marine environments, in both urban and rural landscapes.
She is a scientist who has engaged with the most important issues of the day, having served on 13 advisory bodies (government or community; including two ministerial advisory committees) related to conservation, environment and biodiversity issues. She is author of 33 consultancy reports for local, state and commonwealth governments, community groups and private industry, and of several non-specialist publications on biological diversity, conservation and restoration. Through her research, her publications and her engagement with the conservation challenges of our time, Dr Catterall has demonstrated she is a most worthy recipient of the D.L. Serventy Medal.
Nominations
Nominations for the medal for 2010 should be sent to
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, Department of Zoology, University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2351. Please send a one page citation, a copy of a recent curriculum vitae listing all publications and the names of two referees.
Dominic Louis Serventy (1904-1988)
Dom Serventy was born in Kalgoorlie in 1904, and died in Perth in 1988. He was educated at the Universities of Western Australia (BSc) and Cambridge (PhD 1933). Serventy was a lecturer in zoology at the University of Western Australia from 1934 to 1937, a research officer at the CSIRO Fisheries Division from 1937 to 1951 and officer-in-charge, at CSIRO Wildlife Survey Division, Perth, from 1951 to 1969. He was interested in all aspects of ornithology, from biogeography and speciation to breeding seasons and general biology, and had a long-term influence on conservation. He was President of the RAOU from 1947 to 1949, and a fellow from 1952. He won the Australian Natural History Medallion in 1956, was a member of the Western Australian Wildlife Authority 1943-74, editor of Western Australian Naturalist 1947-80, member of the Permanent Executive Committee of the International Ornithological Congress 1966-78, and fellow of the Western Australian Museum from 1974. With his brother Vincent and sister Lucy, he revived the Western Australian Naturalists' Club after World War Two. He produced extensive sets of bird distribution maps and wrote The Handbook of Australian Seabirds (1971) with Vincent Serventy and John Warham and Birds of Western Australia (five editions between 1948 and 1976) with H.M. Whittell.
(Text adapted from The Flight of the Emu: A Hundred Years of Australian Ornithology 1901-2001 (2001), by Libby Robin.)
The Serventy Medal Committee
The Serventy Medal Committee is a subcommittee of the Research and Conservation Committee (RACC), which assesses nominations for the award and recommends medal winners for consideration by RACC. Currently, the chair of the committee is
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.
The award follows a set of Guidelines, and the committee also has Terms of Reference. |
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Serventy Medallists
2009 Dr Carla Catteral
2008 Prof Stephen Garnett & Dr Gabriel Crowley
2007 Dr Michael Clarke
2006 Dr Denis Saunders
2005 Lesley & Michael Brooker
2004 Professor Andrew Cockburn
2003 Dr Richard Holdaway
2003 Trevor Worthy
2001 Dr John Woinarski
1999 Professor Jiro Kikkawa
1998 Dr Richard Zann
1997 Dr Penny Olsen
1996 Drs Cliff & Dawn Frith
1995 Professor Allen Keast
1994 Dr Harry Recher
1993 Dr Hugh Ford
1992 Dr John Warham
1991 Dr Ian Rowley
D.L. Serventy
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