Dr Cameron Fletcher
Research Director, Living Landscapes
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Biography
Dr Cameron Fletcher is Research Director of the Living Landscapes Program at CSIRO Environment.
Living Landscapes brings together 125 of Australia's best multi-disciplinary environmental scientists to support government, industry and communities to realise a sustainable Australian environment where biodiversity flourishes, ecosystems function and adapt, and ecosystem services continue into the future.
We develop integrated science solutions to complex environmental problems using cutting-edge whole-of-system biophysical expertise to innovative monitoring, assessment, evaluation, prediction, and reporting of land and ecosystem outcomes, to support evidence-based decision making and catalyse new ways of responding to land, water, biodiversity and social challenges.
Background
Dr Cameron Fletcher studies the way people interact with the environment in systems where it is this interaction that drives change, to guide more effective policy and management and solve Australia's environmental challenges.
Dr Fletcher leads teams of specialists from various disciplinary backgrounds, leveraging advanced digital methods and integrating the insights from experts in different fields to build a whole-of-system understanding to inform government policy and management. He has applied his approaches across a number of domains, and his primary area of research over the past ten years has focused on informing the management of Crown-Of-Thorns Starfish (COTS) on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR).
Since 2015, Dr Fletcher's work, with colleagues from a wide array of research and management institutions, has provided the ecological underpinning for the Australian government's ~$240m COTS Control Program on the GBR. In this time, the Program has protected over 400 reefs through targeted removal over 1.2 million starfish. In 2022, this impactful work was recognised as a finalist for the Eureka Prize for Applied Environmental Research, and in 2023 it won the National Banksia Award for Sustainability.
From 2015 – 2020, Dr Fletcher led the integrated modelling component of the NESP Integrated Pest Management of Crown-of-Thorns Starfish (COTS) Research Program, and from 2020 – 2025, he led the Response Subprogram of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation's COTS Control Innovation Program (CCIP), encompassing 11 projects across a number of research and management partners. Dr Fletcher has been asked to extend this approach to consider the management of other species in other ecosystems, including presenting the keynote address at the inaugural Red Sea COTS Forum in 2024, and designing a control program for management of the range-extending sea urchin, Centrostephanus rodgersii in Tasmanian waters in 2022.
Dr Fletcher also leads science strategy at CSIRO. From 2023 – 2024, he was the Science Strategy Lead for the Water Security Program of CSIRO Environment, working with domain experts from across the Program to guide the development of a new foundation for Australian water research at CSIRO. In 2023 – 2024, he was Acting Digital Lead for CSIRO Environment, developing strategy for digital transformation of the science of 800 researchers focussed on solving Australia's largest environmental challenges. In 2019 he led the collaborative design of an Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Strategy for CSIRO Land & Water.
History
Dr Fletcher’s early work in CSIRO’s Complex Systems Science initiative focussed on the dynamic relationship between people that harvest renewable resources and the environment, including indigenous communities and modern farmers. He extended the underlying principles of this work to look at the economics of tree-change urbanization in Far North Queensland, and the potential impacts of changing urbanization patterns on water quality on the Great Barrier Reef. More recently, he has worked with colleagues to developed neural network classification techniques to estimate how well Australia’s National Reserve System will protect our ecosystems under future climates.
A large part of his continuing work at CSIRO has involved designing ecologically effective management strategies for invasive weeds and pests. He has worked on the management of Miconia calvescens and other Class 1 weed species, as well as feral pigs (Sus scrofa) in and around the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area in northern Queensland, as well as community rodent control techniques in rice fields in Vietnam and Indonesia.
From 2008 - 2014, Dr Fletcher led work on the economics of climate adaptation to coastal inundation in Australia’s urban coastal areas. With his team at CSIRO and collaborators at University of Queensland, he measured how much value security against inundation added to a residential house, and simulated how rising sea levels under climate change would affect property values across South East Queensland in future. This novel insight helped local councils decide how much to spend on adaptation actions in the present to avoid damages due to inundation events in the future. He also extended this work to look at equity and how the economic costs of climate change adaptation are distributed across communities; as well as the impacts of climate change on road infrastructure and how institutional interactions across various levels of government enable or constrain adaptation options that can help protect our communities from these events.
Current Roles
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Research Director
Living Landscapes
Academic Qualifications
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1999
B.Sc., Hons (1st class), Physics
University of Western Australia -
2005
Ph.D., Physics
Australian National University
Professional Experiences
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2024-2025
Science Strategy Lead
Water Security Program -
2023-2024
Acting Digital Lead
CSIRO Environment -
2020-2023
Group Leader, Environmental Informatics
CSIRO -
2021- Current
Subprogram Lead, Response Subprogram
COTS Control Innovation Program -
2020-2021
Decision Support & Modelling Program Area Lead
COTS Control Innovation Program -
2015-2020
Modelling and Decision Support Lead
NESP COTS IPM Research Program -
2014-2021
Site Leader, CSIRO Atherton
CSIRO -
2021-
Principal Research Scientist
CSIRO Townsville -
2015-2021
Senior Research Scientist
CSIRO Atherton -
2007-2015
Research Scientist
CSIRO Atherton -
2004-2007
Postdoctoral Fellow
CSIRO Atherton -
2004-2004
Postdoctoral Fellow
Australian National University
Achievements and Awards
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2023-
Winner, National Banksia Sustainability Award for Biodiversity
Banksia Foundation -
2022-
Finalist, Eureka Awards for Applied Environmental Research
Eureka Awards -
2007-
Best Presentation
Complex '07 -
2001-
Dean's Prize
ANU
Community and Corporate Citizenship
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2014-2021
Chair of the Site Committee / Emergency Management Committee / HSE Committee, CSIRO Atherton
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2008-2020
Consultative Committee Representative, CSIRO Atherton and CSIRO Cairns
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2018
Lion's Youth Of The Year Zone Judge
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2015-2017
Chief Fire Warden, CSIRO Atherton
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2007-2017
First Aid Officer, CSIRO Atherton
Publications
We have publications by Dr Cameron Fletcher