Seed and sapling funding

Funded 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.