Photo by Topa Petit, Cercartetus concinnus

Tony Griffiths

Tony Griffiths of the Wet and Dry

Each time I contact an AMS member for the purpose of a feature, I try to choose someone with a different job or activity, and working in a different place. This time we feature at last someone from the Northern Territory, but whose surprising background and life adventure may only be surprising to the non-initiated. I am detecting a pattern… it seems to me that every AMS member is utterly surprising, and that’s what all AMS members have in common! Tony Griffiths naturally started off at a horse stud, and after a brief delay learning to be a teacher, of course became a postman before picking up his kelpie and surfboard for a tour of Australia. Nothing unusual there. Tony, however, is the only AMS member I know of who was savaged and torn to pieces (at least two large ones) by a quoll without asking for it. It is no wonder he is now focusing on marine mammals. Enjoy Tony’s story.

Topa Petit, Membership Officer

Below: Tony and nuts (photo: Stuart Young)

Current job

I currently work for the NT Department of Land Resource Management to conduct research and monitoring programs to support the management of native species, in particular marine megafauna and their habitats. I manage a small team of scientists who work in partnership with Aboriginal ranger groups, oil/gas/mining companies, universities and other government research agencies. The work is mainly focused in the Top End of the NT but occasionally extends to central Australia. In addition to this I’m leading the development of a data management system that will make our work more accessible and secure.

History

I grew up in Ballarat where my mother ran a small horse stud and my father was a doctor. I had visions of following in his footsteps until I realised that you need to be really smart (I wasn’t) and you had to work all the time (I didn’t). Animals were a big part of our lives ˗ looking after many orphaned animals (native and domestic), five dogs, cats, sheep, cows, horses, goats, chooks, rabbits, mice etc. I think this may have influenced on me later on.

It took me quite a while to settle on science as a profession, mainly through a process of trial and error. Firstly, I enrolled in a Bachelor of Rural Science at UNE and lasted 10 weeks before dropping out to work on a farm for a year. Next I completed a Bachelor of Education and after graduating worked as a postman because teaching wasn’t my thing. I then decided to leave Melbourne/Victoria and embark on the classic around Australia trip with my Holden ute (WB), kelpie and surfboard in search of something different. This led me to Darwin and a very wet wet-season forced me to stop for a few weeks and I ended up staying for 25 years (note this is a typical story for many Darwinites). Here I started to develop my interest in ecology and was lucky enough to volunteer on a survey in Kakadu run by John Woinarski and Alaric Fisher. This was a game changer as I suddenly discovered an absolutely amazing fauna and landscape. This led to me completing a Masters on frillneck lizards and eventually a PhD on small mammals (both at CDU). Prior to working with the NT Govt. I spent eight years as a lecturer at Charles Darwin University and two years with CSIRO. I’ve spent my entire professional career in the wet-dry tropics (and therefore probably have a pretty skewed view of the world).

Above: Tony fishing (photo: Teagan Calnan)

Interesting research/projects

The Northern Territory is a wonderful place to work on native wildlife and being a small team it’s not realistic to specialise on one group such as mammals (sorry AMS). Some of the highlights include the working on the northern quoll translocation from the mainland to two remote islands off the Arnhem Land coast, the first biological surveys of Litchfield and Limmen National Parks and the Kapalga Fire Experiment in Kakadu.

Current projects

My current role is focused on marine environments and current projects involve coastal dolphin population dynamics (capture-mark-recapture), dugong distribution and abundance (aerial survey), seagrass mapping and monitoring (occupancy modelling), habitat mapping (multibeam and video surveys), marine turtle population dynamics (capture-mark-recapture). I’ve recently helped out on an aerial survey of buffalo in Arnhem Land and modelling central rock-rat habitat, rare plant species distribution on the Tiwi Islands and feral cat occupancy. In reality I spend much of my time managing people and crunching numbers but try to get out in the field as much as possible.

Above: Tony and kangaroo mural (photo: Alistair Stewart)

Achievements

I recently completed my PhD, which was very satisfying. It was particularly rewarding because a lot of the data I used had been collected over 25 years ago as part of a landscape-scale fire experiment and hadn’t been fully analysed. Given the reduction in funding levels and small mammals in northern Australia it is unlikely that this work will be repeated and, therefore, the data were very valuable. I’ve just published all the chapters from the thesis and hope this can contribute to understanding and mitigating the decline of small mammals in northern Australia.

Favourite activity in mammalogy

It’s a bit nerdy but I actually enjoy analysing data the most. Being able to discover something new and tell a story with a bunch of numbers can be quite exciting. Like a lot of other people I got into ecology partly through my passion for the bush and the animals in it, but over the years I’ve seen a lot of data collected and stuck in the filing cabinet, never to be used and therefore wasted.

Mammal anecdote

The small mammal fauna of northern Australia is currently experiencing a dramatic decline and it is not uncommon to not catch anything at all in Elliott and cage traps. Things used to be different. On my first fauna survey I was camped out at Gimbat homestead in Kakadu – a swag and an old-style mozzie net – when a very feisty northern quoll decided I was fair game and jumped on my face. This was a big shock for me (and probably the quoll) and I fell asleep thinking that my face was lacerated, only to wake up in the morning and see a tiny scratch across my nose.

Advice for people interested in Australasian mammalogy

Finding a mentor who is passionate can make a big difference and don’t be afraid of maths.

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