In 2019, the Australian forest ecology community lost one of its most passionate and respected scientists, when Dave passed away after a skiing accident on Victoria’s Mount Bogong. His death is a huge loss to his wife Sera and children Leo and Jasper, and also to the Conservation and Landscape Ecology group who worked so closely with him over ten years.
We have retained his profile on the Long Term Ecology site as a tribute to his dedication and enthusiasm.
Dave Blair has been interested in forests and wild places most of his life. He completed a degree in Forest Science at Melbourne University and spent his unencumbered youth travelling, rock climbing, bike riding and photographing around Australia, Indonesia, NZ and Canada. Forests and mountainous regions, endangered species and threatened habitats were regular themes including 8 months on a research site following orang-utans in Borneo. He worked professionally as an environmental photojournalist before starting his own environmental consultancy doing native vegetation assessments. Following the 2009 Black Saturday fires, he joined the research team working on the long term monitoring project in the Central Highlands of Victoria. His primary studies are of the vegetation, possums and birds, how the forest has been regenerating after the fires and the effects of logging. Dave is currently studying for his Masters and is also working with a small development group who are writing the national standards for Forest Stewardship Council Australia (FSC) in relation to certification of Australian wood products. If all that was not enough, he is also an active scout leader in the town of Healesville where he lives with his family.
