Working Life
Andrew is an environmental educator and wildlife naturalist with a professional background in conservation science. He has managed a team of environmental and Aboriginal education rangers for the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service for nearly 20 years on the north coast.
Andrew specialises in landscape-scale ecological perspectives and communicating the science and impacts of climate change on Gondwana World Heritage rainforest ecosystems.
Andrew’s private work covers a diverse range of bird-related projects, including unique bird language and nature connection retreats, avian ecology surveys, online bird language learning series and personalised mentoring. He is a founding member of The Centre for Ecological Learning where he developed nature connection programs and mentored teenagers on bushcraft camps, remote hikes and a young naturalist club. He has been keynote speaker for numerous environmental education conferences and events, including presenting at the 2018 Happiness and Wellbeing Conference.
Andrew currently spends most of his time researching and writing interpretative natural history stories for NSW National Parks visitor signage and website content.
If he gets half a chance, he also hopes to publish a collection of naturalist short stories.
About the Bloke
Andrew has grown up around nature and birds for his whole life. In fact, it would be an anathema to live without them. He is widely believed to favour the company of wildlife or a forested moist gully over most people. Yet he adamantly rejects the notion of being called a misanthrope. He prefers the term – ‘reclusive nerdy type’. Regardless of this, and perhaps because of it, Andrew feels compelled to share his accumulated knowledge and insights about how we can connect deeply and profoundly with natural landscapes through paying close attention to birds.
Indeed, he believes that without a radical reconfiguration of society’s relationship to nature it should no longer be considered hyperbole to suggest the near-term fate of humanity is utterly rooted.
Andrew lives on a functional (as opposed to dysfunctional) multiple occupancy property on the north coast of NSW with his wife Rose and their brady-bunch family. He enjoys sitting with bird-loving friends in the bush, drinking strong coffee on the deck of a morning, tending to the unrelenting appetites of 3 teenagers and winning battles against multitudes of belligerent forest creatures who would rather eat his snow peas and potatoes than wild offerings.
He loathes technology when it won’t do what it should, Telstra, library opening hours, twitchers and sharp gravel or bindies (he has sensitive feet).
Read more of Andrew’s Story – How I became a bird nerd
