Dr Georgia Ward-Fear is an Australian conservation scientist and reptile ecologist. She asks counterintuitive questions: Can pest species be ecologically useful? Does indigenous traditional hunting increase prey resilience under environmental change? Instead of controlling harmful invasive species, can we ‘train’ the native animals they impact? Her research sits at the interface of invasion ecology, animal behaviour and sometimes, sociopolitical science. To tackle conservation issues, Georgia collaborates with indigenous land management networks and brings industry stakeholders together in new and exciting ways. For her PhD (2016), together with the Balanggarra indigenous rangers, Georgia trialled a novel technique to mitigate the ecological impacts of toxic cane toads on wild Monitor lizards, (inducing ‘Taste Aversion’); it was successful, attracting international media attention and leading to further funding. Georgia then developed ‘The Cane Toad Coalition’ (2017), a strategic partnership between prominent conservation organisations, Indigenous NGOs and cultural groups, State governments and regional stakeholders (www.canetoadcoalition.com). Georgia leads the coalition, with the ambitious task of delivering the largest and most innovative strategy for cane toad mitigation to date. Together with her indigenous collaborators, she works with a range of apex reptilian predators in the wild. Excitingly, they are succeeding at mitigating the impacts of this devastating toad invasion…

Georgia is a University medallist (2009), a Val street Scholar (2013-16) and is part of the Homeward Bound initiative (2019) a global network of Women in STEM, collaborating to influence global environmental policy. She is one of Science and Technologies Australia ‘Superstars of STEM’ and an APIS ‘Tall poppy’. Recently, her biography was written for the 5-book series ‘Aussie STEM stars’, for kids aged 10-13. She hopes to apply the taste aversion results to other systems and challenge academic models of conservation research globally.