BirdLife Australia Southern NSW – Phil Straw, Chairman

Phil Straw is the director of Avifauna Research & Services, the only company in Australia 100% dedicated to the conservation of wetlands and waterbirds.

Phil is heavily involved with the BirdLife family at all levels from local to international. He enjoys working with the dedicated BL International staff in Cambridge as well as in ‘our’ flyway, and with our own passionate staff at BLA. He sees his new role as working to bridge gaps between the many bird groups in NSW and BirdLife to achieve conservation outcomes for our most critically threatened birds through a close association of like-minded individuals.

At 75 Phil has a very long history of involvement in the world of ornithology starting as a schoolboy bird watcher in the 1950s, determined to work full time with birds.

Phil was an assistant warden at Bardsey Island Bird Observatory in Wales in 1960 when he followed the suggestion of a friend to volunteer at a large research establishment in the Camargue in the south of France during the four-month winter closure of Bardsey. Within two months Dr Luc Hoffmann, who had built and established the research station offered him full time employment, studying bird migration and wetlands management.

The appointment involved banding 150,000 birds over four years, managing wetlands and chance involvement in a global wetlands conference in the Camargue, convened by Luc Hoffmann and other world leaders in wetlands and wildlife conservation, that initiated the conception of the Ramsar Convention in 1962. This involvement has had a major impact on Phil’s life ever since.

During his time in France Phil was invited to join the 1963 Trinity College East Greenland Expedition as ornithologist to catch, band and film Arctic-breeding birds.

Phil then took up a position as research assistant to David Lack, another luminary of the ornithological world, at the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology at Oxford University. There he worked on the breeding biology of two species of Paridae (tits) with some well-known field ornithologists such as Chris Perrins and Ian Newton.

Neverthelesshe decided not to complete his PhD but to instead seek adventure and migrate to Australia in 1966. However,before leaving the UK he spent several months working with shovel and wheelbarrow to help another larger than life character, Bert Axell, to buildthe ‘Wader Scrape’ at Minsmere Nature Reserve in Suffolk, which is still a monument to Bert long after his death.

Phil worked at Queensland University during what many considered the ‘crisis period of the RAOU’ when most branches were disbanded, to be replaced by splinter groups formed by disgruntled long-term members of the RAOU. The indignant Phil Straw called a meeting (after much deliberation) of Queensland ornithologists to form the Queensland Ornithological Society (recently renamed Birds Queensland).

By this time Phil had turned his attention to marine research and moved to NSW to work with the Research Branch of NSW State Fisheries in 1971 to establish marine parks and construct artificial reefs to attract marine life.

In 1988 he took up a position to work on a three-year research project on the Silver Gull during which time he became interested in the demise of the Gould’s Petrel on Cabbage Tree Island and migratory shorebirds,becoming an active member of the Australasian Wader Studies Group (AWSG). In 1990 he formed the NSW Wader Study Group as a splinter group of the Australian Bird Study Association and is still its chair as well as being vice chairman of the AWSG since June 2001.

Phil became instigator and first editor of the AWSG’s newsletter ‘Tattler’ in 1994 to improve communications between members of the AWSG and shorebird workers along the East Asian-Australasian Flyway. With the approach of thesixth RamsarConvention of Contracting Parties in Brisbane in 1996 (also the 25th anniversary of Ramsar), Phil saw the opportunity to organise an international conference on shorebird conservation in the Asia-Pacific when the world’s attention was focused on Australia and ‘our flyway’. The conference ‘Shorebird Conservation in the Asia-Pacific Region’, attended by the world’s waterbird experts provided the impetus for the launch of the East Asian Australasian Shorebird Reserve Network a few days later, eventually leading to the formation of the East Asian Australasian Flyway Partnership (EAAFP). He has been heavily involved in the EAAFP since its first meeting working towards the conservation of key shorebird sites along the flyway.

Phil sat on the committee of the Southern NSW and ACT Group of the RAOU (precursor to BLSNSW) from 1992-1998.