IUCN SSC Australia Plant Specialist Group

Tom Le Breton is a plant and fire ecologist with an interest in threatened species assessment and conservation. His PhD thesis was focused on assessing how fire regimes are changing at scales ranging from local to global and understanding the consequences for plant species and vegetation. Additionally, Tom has worked extensively and published on threatened species risk assessment, including leading the national assessment of 260 plant species impacted by the 2019-2020 Black Summer fires. He has been involved in international collaborations, and is working with the IUCN Species Survival Commission to establish an Australian Plant Species Specialist Group to advance plant conservation in collaboration with researchers and practitioners across the country. 

I am a plant ecologist and conservation biologist who runs a research program at the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment at Western Sydney University in Australia. I investigate plant diversity and adaptation, including experimental and field studies of plant responses to key threatening processes such as climate change and fire. I have worked in plant science since 2004, initially at the National Herbarium of NSW and subsequently as an Australian Research Council Early Career Research Fellow (DECRA 2017-2021). I am a current member of the Commonwealth of Australia’s Threatened Species Scientific Committee (TSSC) and previous Deputy Chair and member of the NSW TSSC (2016-2021).