WILDLIFE CONSERVATION LAB
Dr April Reside
Senior Lecturer | School of the Environment, and Agriculture and Food Sustainability
About
April Reside is a Senior Lecturer in Wildlife Science at the University of Queensland.
Dr Reside's research encompasses ecology, conservation, and policy. She focusses on
threatened species recovery, investigating refuges and refugia; and recovery actions and
their costs for Australia’s threatened species. Given that agriculture is the most extensive
land use, April now leads a research program on conservation across agricultural
landscapes. One key component of this work is on the threatened reptiles of the intensively
managed Darling Downs, with a focus on the Condamine and Roma earless dragons
(Tympanocryptis condaminensis and T. wilsoni).
Building on a lifetime’s fascination with bats, April also leads a research program of bats in
mixed-use landscapes. In particular, April’s lab is researching the pest control services
provided by insectivorous bats for cropping systems in southeast Queensland.
April also works on conservation of woodland bird communities, the impact of climate
change on biodiversity, and strategies for climate change adaptation, incorporating carbon
sequestration. This research fed into Natural Resource Management and government
planning for climate change adaptation.
April has worked as a field ecologist in southern Africa, and for Australian Wildlife
Conservancy, before moving to the tropics for her PhD on “Assessing Climate Change
Vulnerability: Novel methods for understanding potential impacts on Australian Tropical
Savanna Birds”. This work adapted species distribution modelling techniques to account for
temporal and spatial variability in the distributions of highly vagile bird species. Her work
helped to inform the IUCN SSC Guidelines for Assessing Species’ Vulnerability to Climate
Change by the IUCN Species Survival Commission.
April serves on the Conservation and Science Committee for the Invasive Species Council.
Previously she Chaired the Black-throated Finch Recovery Team, and served on the
Research and Conservation Committee and Threatened Species Committee for Birdlife
Australia.
April holds a current A Class Banding licence with the ABBBS and is happy to support
banding projects.
In her spare time April likes to watch birds, frogs, mammals, snakes and lizards; and likes
travelling to find new animals to see.
April's Favourite Animal
Hmmm just so many to choose from … growing up it was a tie between yellow-tailed black-cockatoo and sugar glider, now probably Condamine earless dragon!