The Council of the Royal Society of NSW warmly congratulates one of its Fellows, Professor Richard Kingsford FRSN of UNSW Sydney, on being awarded a Gold Medal by the Ecological Society of Australia (ESA) for 2021.  The Gold Medals awarded each year by the ESA recognise the impact of the work of leading Australian ecologists.

Professor Kingsford, who is a river ecologist and conservation biologist, and Director of the Centre for Ecosystem Science at UNSW Sydney, has made a significant contribution to understanding the impact of water resource developments on rivers and wetlands. He has worked extensively across the wetlands and rivers of the Murray-Darling and Lake Eyre Basins and leads the Eastern Australian Waterbird Survey, running since 1983 and spanning approximately one-third of the continent. This survey provides one of Australia’s most important long-term datasets on the health and biodiversity of the country’s river and wetland areas.  Recently, he has also led a study on the impact of dams on downstream platypus populations, resulting in a submission for threatened species status for the platypus.

In a lecture titled “Murray-Darling Basin turmoil: past, present, and future”, Professor Kingsford spoke on these very topics at a recent online meeting of the Royal Society of NSW.  A recording of this presentation is available on the Society’s YouTube channel.    

To learn more about this award, please see the announcement on the UNSW Sydney Newsroom website.