Team Leaders

Tim Low is a well-known biologist and prize-winning author of six books. He writes regularly for Wingspan, Australia’s leading bird magazine, and recently wrote a major feature highlighting Christmas Island for Australian Geographic. His most recent book, The New Nature, was praised by Time magazine, and rated by Who magazine as one of the books of the year. His other books include the internationally-published Feral Future, and Bush Tucker, Bush Medicine and Wild Foodplants of Australia. The Sydney Morning Herald describes Tim as a ‘classic Australian scientific stirrer’. He is currently writing a book about birds which has taken him on travels all over Australia and to Asia, Africa, Latin America and Antarctica.
David James is a leading authority on seabirds and the expert on Christmas Island birds. He contributed entries for over 100 species in the prestigious bird encyclopaedia: Handbook of Australian, New Zealand and Antarctic Birds (HANZAB). During his four years on Christmas Island David has recorded many vagrants, including birds new to the Australian list, such as Common Kingfisher and Large Hawk Cuckoo. Previously he worked on whale research in North America, on Cane Toads and disappearing rainforest frogs in Queensland's Wet Tropics. and as an environmental consultant in north Queensland. David now works for Parks Australia, overseeing a biodiversity monitoring program on Christmas Island. This involves research into the island's landbirds and seabirds, bats, reptiles, crabs and insects. A currently running program using satellite transmitters to track Christmas Island Frigatebirds has revealed the incredbible 4,700 km journey of a female that flew to the Java Sea and back, remaining aloft for 26 days.
Dr Janos Hennicke specialises in studying the ecology of seabirds using microelectronic transmitters and data loggers. For the past three years he has been studying Abbott’s, Brown, and Red-footed Boobies on Christmas Island, and collaborating with David James to study Christmas Island Frigatebirds. He has also studied Humboldt Penguins in Chile, Magellanic Penguins in Argentina, Red-legged kittiwakes in Alaska, and Northern Gannets in Scotland. Janos has also worked on European Moles, Porcupines, Black Bears and desert spiders, and he is a regular seabird guide on antarctic crusie ships. Based in the Department of Ecology and Conservation at the University of Hamburg, Janos will again return to Christmas Island this year to climb rainforest trees and catch Abbott’s Boobies on their nests.
Mark Holdsworth runs the Orange-bellied Parrot Recovery Programme for the Tasmanian National Parks and Wildlife Service. He has a special interest in birds of prey and is a longstanding member, former President and former journal editor for the Australasian Raptor Association. He has undertaken several expeditions with the federal Dept of Environment & Heritage to band seabirds in the Coral Sea. In 2004 he participated in the ARA expedition to Christmas Island, colour banding the Christmas Island Goshawk. Mark will be on Christmas Island banding seabirds and assisting with the Booby Tracking Programme in August and September 2006.
Dr Nic Dunlop is an animal ecologist and conservationist with a long term research interest in the population biology and marine ecology of tropical seabirds. Between 1984 and 1986 he worked as the conservation officer for the mining operation on Christmas Island and in 1987 he conducted a survey of the Golden Bosunbird for the Australian National Parks & Wildlife Service (now Parks Australia). He currently works for the Conservation Council of WA on the environmental impacts of fisheries.

This information was taken from http://www.christmas.net.au/birdweek.html