All biodiversity projects

Explore our projects

All of the Institute's projects are findable below, linking to each project page which provide key details. Projects are also listed per cluster on the Our Research page.

• Supporting governments to achieve better outcomes for regions and communities

  MBI is working with government to develop new approaches to regional planning. Through a multi-institutional response, MBI researchers developed recommendations on strategic approaches protecting biodiversity values effectively in the face of accelerating development pressures.

• Submission to the Senate Inquiry on Environment Protection Reform Bill 2025 and six related bills

  The MBI submitted to the Parliament of Australia Environment and Communications Legislation Committee’s Inquiry on Environment Protection Reform Bill 2025 and six related bills.

• Melbourne Biodiversity Institute Submission to Australia’s Strategy for Nature 2024-2026

  A multidisciplinary collective of MBI scholars gave feedback on the Department for Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water’s (DCCEEW) discussion paper for the implementation plan for Australia’s Strategy for Nature 2024-2030 in the aim of providing critical guidance to governments and stakeholders.

• MBI Submissions to Draft Environmental Offsets Standard Policy Paper and Draft MNES Standard

  MBI suggested improvements to the Environmental Standards for Matters of National Environmental Significance to ensure the reforms achieve the goals they set out to do: to ensure the protection and survival of ecosystems and species.

• Barriers and pathways for First Peoples’ participation in natural capital and carbon markets and covenanting programs to care for Country

  The project supports Taungurung Land and Water Council’s aspirations to care for Taungurung Country, by assessing current Victorian and Australian Government policy and market settings for protecting biodiversity with respect to their suitability or otherwise for First Peoples’ caring for Country.

• The political economy of deep-sea mining: Governance, financial power, and resistance

  This project investigates how power, geopolitics, finance and resistance are shaping the emerging governance of deep-sea mining.

• The Song of the Cricket

  The Song of the Cricket is a unique interdisciplinary initiative that enhances biodiversity through modular floating islands designed as portable breeding stations for reintroducing invertebrates and rehabilitating food webs and biodiversity on selected sites.

• Supporting Bank Australia customers for nature and climate

  This MBI-led project with Bank Australia created a benchmarking survey and change model to understand customers’ openness to nature-positive action and what the roles banks can play in leading positive change.

• Evaluating nature-risk investment decision tools with Franklin Templeton

  As financial institutions grapple with the challenge of measuring nature-related risks, reliable biodiversity assessment tools are becoming essential. The MBI’s review of leading platforms revealed major inconsistencies, highlighting the urgent need for transparent and standardised methodologies.

• Biodiversity footprint as living lab with UoM Sustainability team

  The University of Melbourne's Sustainability Strategy team engaged the MBI to lead a comprehensive, institution-wide biodiversity footprint and materiality assessment of nature-related pressures and dependencies.

• ICMM upstream value chain analysis

  This project brings together industry, consultancy expertise and academic research to generate practical, evidence-based insights for ICMM members on how their upstream value chains impact nature and how these impacts can be managed and reduced.

• Understanding cultural and social values shaping renewable energy decisions

  This project explores how renewable energy planning can better integrate biodiversity and community priorities through genuine collaboration. By learning from grassroots organisations and Traditional Owners, the team is developing practical guidelines for more inclusive, nature-positive energy transitions.

• Mapping a rapid nature-positive renewable energy transition

  MBI work shows that Australia can meet Net Zero targets without destroying biodiversity. These tools help identify environmental risks early, saving the energy sector time and money while supporting national and international commitments to halt human-induced extinctions.

• Victoria Drought Resilience Adoption & Innovation Hub (Vic Hub)

  The Hub has a focus on environmental protections, including a close focus on biodiversity protections, with a number of MBI researchers connected to the Hub.

• Creating the Victorian Biodiversity Index

  Melbourne Biodiversity Institute partnered with DEECA to explore how customers value and engage with nature and climate. The findings are helping shape the bank’s leadership in building a nature-positive economy.

• Building capacity and conserving Bogong moths (deberra)

  The Bogong moth is at the centre of an ambitious collaboration blending Traditional Knowledge and Western science. Together, researchers and First Nations partners are working to understand and protect this culturally and ecologically vital species.

• Understanding perspectives and practices related to feral pig control, use and management in the Otways

  At the heart of this project is a commitment to understanding people as part of the ecological system. By exploring how people understand feral pigs and the natural environment more broadly, the research supports more effective, ethical and socially informed approaches to managing this complex issue.

2025 seed funding projects

• Evaluating bottom-up and top-down approaches for restoring urban biodiversity corridors

  Building on the Connected Corridors initiative, which identified 1,612 km of potential biodiversity corridors in Greater Melbourne.

• Can dingoes help to manage introduced deer?

  Investigating the diet of dingoes in Bunyip State Park to understand the potential contribution of dingoes to deer management.

• Plant to Learn the vAlue of biodiversity iN healThcare (PLANT)

  This project scales up an existing planting and education program ('Living Lab') for biodiversity at the University of Melbourne's Dookie campus.

• Greening Constitutional Law: Pedagogical Pathways to Ecological Well-Being

  Examining anthropocentric assumptions embedded in Australian constitutional law and exploring the potential for incremental norm change through legal education.

• Co-designing multi-purpose nature-based solutions for food sovereignty and health (CodeMOANAH)

  Piloting an internationally recognised method to characterise, analyse and map biodiversity in Indigenous food production systems.

• Testing habitat additions to save frogs from pandemic disease

  Testing whether thermal hotspots and salty pools can act as disease refuges, providing evidence to guide conservation actions by land managers across the state.

• Riding the wave to formalise the Melanesian Bio-Cultural Network

  Launching the Melanesian Biocultural Network as an Indigenous-led regional platform to advance biodiversity conservation through cultural governance and traditional ecological knowledge.

• Investigating and addressing impacts of construction waste on waterway ecosystem biodiversity

  Investigating the impacts of construction-waste on waterway ecosystem biodiversity and human wellbeing in urban growth areas.

• The Terroir-Country Project: Supporting Biodiverse Multifunction Winescapes through Indigenous Partnerships

  Mapping, measuring, and analysing the impact of established biodiversity practices at Lot 50 to develop a model for biodiverse multifunction winescapes to be implemented across Australia.

• Recording Marine Worlds: Dialogues on Sound, Conservation, and Culture

  This project promotes interdisciplinary knowledge of marine worlds with a focus on sound recording as an array of technologies, practices, and conceptual models.

• eDNA air sampling for on-farm and adjacent biodiversity at Dookie

  Testing whether existing air sampling filters can capture biodiversity information in the form of environmental DNA (eDNA).

• Waking Up in Australia: Biodiversity, Sound, Temporality

  Developing a novel approach to biodiversity by exploring its relationship with perceptions, experiences, and everyday structures of time.

• Wildlife from Bush to City: a One Health approach workshop

  Bringing together experts and stakeholders for a one-day workshop to address knowledge gaps in wildlife health responses to anthropogenic landscape change.

• Australian Nature-based Solutions for disaster resilience: addressing barriers to scaling

  Synthesising evidence on the effectiveness of nature-based solutions for fire, flood, drought and coastal protection across Australia's Natural Resource Management sector.

• From Anthropocentrism to Interbeing: Overcoming Barriers to Ecological Awareness for the Biodiversity Crisis Through Immersive Experience

  Co-designing a multi-user virtual reality experience that translates deep ecology ritual and contemplative practice into group perspective-taking exercises.

• Reimagining ocean governance through an ethic of care lens

  Developing a theoretical framework for applying an ethic of care to ocean governance, shifting the paradigm from exploitation to reciprocity.

• The Nature of Corporate Leadership: Addressing the Value-Action Gap

  This research project investigates the disconnect between executives' personal valuing and appreciation for nature and their professional decision-making.

• Shelterbelt/understory impact on pasture and soil microbial biodiversity and productivity

  Investigating how different shelterbelt and understory systems affect pasture productivity and soil microbial biodiversity across seasons.

• Dynamic spatio-temporal modelling of chytridiomycosis in frogs

  Using epidemiological models informed by experimental estimates of chytridiomycosis across different microclimates.

• Understanding how Australia's largest companies disclose nature risk

  Assessing how Australia's 200 largest publicly-listed companies (the ASX200) currently report their impacts, dependencies, and risks on nature to the public and shareholders.

• Workshop: Understanding natural capital's role in insurance for farms

  Workshop investigating how insurance companies integrate natural assets into climate risk assessments and explore the potential for the insurance industry to incentivise increases in natural capital on farms.

• Guided nature interpretation for connection: Learning from program leaders

  Investigating how programs in Australia encourage connections that support care for biodiversity.

• Nature-Inspired Awe: Relationship with Transcendence and Ecological Care Across Cultures

  Scoping review examining how awe-inspiring nature experiences relate to transcendence and environmental action.

• Living Shorelines Oceania: Nature-based solutions for Pacific Islands coastal resilience

  Developing a Living Shorelines Oceania database that shares local projects and experiences, connects communities, highlights island-led solutions and supports regional collaboration to scale up effective nature-based solutions.

• Habitat design to reduce predation and improve shellfish reef restoration

  Investigating innovative design and construction approaches using clay 3D printing to create predation refugia for shellfish reef restoration.

• Challenging perceptions of darkness to enhance biodiversity

  Exploring how curated nighttime experiences might reshape how people value darkness and biodiversity.

• Awe and wonder with urban nature: fostering care with Country

  Exploring how experiences of awe and wonder in urban nature can deepen human-nature connections and foster ecological care and custodianship.

• A vision for biodiverse, multifunction landscapes in Australia

  Building a shared vision, research agenda and implementation roadmap for landscapes that genuinely support, and are enhanced by, biodiversity.

• A Framework for Nature Wonder Recognition for Cities

  Through collaborative stakeholder engagement and co-design the project will produce an influencer-focused communication campaign and test interest in cities as natural wonders.

• Sonic Youth for Melbourne Chamber Orchestra

  Scaling up a pre-existing interdisciplinary initiative that uses participatory practice to engage youth in rural communities with issues around biodiversity, sustainability, climate change and community resilience.