Peter Copley

The seeds of Pete’s passion for the natural environment were planted by his father, a mid-North farmer and amateur botanist. Whenever their mixed crop and livestock farming schedule allowed, they’d spend their days collecting plants for the South Australian Herbarium and their nights changing the papers in plant presses. Even as a boy, Pete snuck birdwatching into most days.

An Honours degree in plant taxonomy became the basis for Pete’s subsequent pursuits in plant, animal and ecological community research and conservation management. In the late-1970s and early 1980s his paid and unpaid projects covered vegetation mapping, environmental impact assessment surveys, park management planning, revegetation reviews, surveys for yellow-footed rock-wallabies, researching information and shoot locations for a TV documentary series about exotic Australian animals. He participated in a re-enactment of the first scientific crossing of the Simpson Desert by camels for a documentary, The Madigan Line and was a member of an Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition to Heard Island.

Since then, Pete has surveyed, studied and helped recover threatened species in almost every corner of SA, including on many offshore islands. He initiated the successful landscape-scale Bounceback project and was a co-founder of the Arid Recovery project near Olympic Dam. While searching for the (now extinct) Lesser Stick-nest Rat in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yangkunytjatjara (APY) Lands, Pete was encouraged by a traditional owner “to come back and write it all down”. He did just that as part of biological survey expeditions to the APY Lands from 1989 to 2001, recording both Aboriginal and scientific information about local plants and animals. He was also a member of co-management boards for conservation reserves in South Australia and of the Cultural and Scientific Advisory Committee for Uluru–Kata Tjuta National Park.

He has been involved in wildlife research and conservation projects in Britain, Europe and South America. And, just as he did as a boy, wherever he is in the world, Pete always finds time for birdwatching.