Abbie is Co-Director of the UWA Centre for Environmental Economics & Policy and a Premier’s Early to Mid-Career Fellow in the School of Agriculture and Environment and Oceans Institute at the University of Western Australia. She leads a program of work aimed at improving decision making processes for coastal management. Abbie was formerly the Deputy Director of the Ocean’s Institute, and has worked extensively in multidisciplinary ocean and coastal research.
Abbie applies her experience researching the integration of community values for the environment in economic frameworks to provide advice to the NWSFTCP in the prioritisation of conservation decisions.
"To increase the success of flatback conservation, it is important that we are aware of the tradeoffs implied when deciding on the best conservation actions. Understanding biological and ecological feasibility of different actions is important, but equally we need to consider the costs of different actions and the ways in which communities will respond in order to prioritise conservation investments effectively."