Dr Stephen Bell

I work as a vegetation ecologist and consultant botanist, and have been involved in native vegetation survey, classification and mapping in the Greater Sydney and Hunter Regions of New South Wales since 1990. Under contract to State government, I have undertaken comprehensive plant surveys for the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service in over 30 conservation reserves, and have been Lead Botanist for several large scale regional projects within the Sydney Basin bioregion. On behalf of Local government, I have co-ordinated and completed LGA-wide vegetation classification and mapping projects across a number of local Council areas, and have examined the distribution and ecology of several legally protected Threatened Ecological Communities and numerous threatened plant species. Also dabbling in the plant taxonomy field, I have discovered and co-described a small number of new plant species from the Hunter Valley, with ongoing studies continuing into other regional novelties.

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In October 1996, I established a specialist botanical consultancy providing high quality services to government and the private sector, a business which remains my principle employer. After 25 years in the consulting field, I have developed a wide network of contacts both in government and industry, which I use to facilitate my research interests. Following 15 years of data collection in the private consulting field, I began my PhD studies in 2004 to tackle strategic planning issues that became evident from many years attempting to ‘pigeon-hole’ the vegetated environment. In particular, I found the lack of recognition of geographically restricted and rare plant communities in regional strategic planning initiatives frustrating, and an improvement in methods of classification and mapping was seen as paramount. During this process, a number of restricted plant communities have been defined and delineated, some of which (eg: Kincumber Scribbly Gum Forest, Quorrobolong Scribbly Gum Forest) are now legally protected through threatened species legislation. Revisions to other legally-defined communities are ongoing.

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Linking back with the School of Environmental and Life Sciences in 2014, I now hope to use my skills, experience and contacts to further research into the ecology of plant species and vegetation communities of the Hunter and Greater Sydney Regions.

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Research Expertise
My research priorities sway between two related streams of investigation. First and foremost, all of my research involves native plant species, the communities in which they occur, and how the activities of Man impact upon them. In this regard I strive to apply the same principles behind individual plant species recognition and conservation to the habitats (plant communities) in which they live. I am particularly interested in the detection, recognition and mapping of rare plant communities, as it is these that are most often overlooked in strategic planning instruments. I do this by investigating how such communities can be best sampled, analysed and depicted in vegetation maps, so that land-use planners and practitioners can manage landscapes accordingly. Legally protected plant communities (such as can be listed on the NSW Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016 or the Commonwealth Environment Protection & Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999) are a specific avenue of research, as in many cases these threatened communities are also geographically restricted. Other fields of interest include:

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• Vegetation classification of the Sydney Basin bioregion – in collaboration with other researchers from the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage, I have been classifying and mapping the native vegetation of the Sydney Basin since the early 1990’s. Continuing data collection and analysis furthers our understanding of how different plant communities are related to one another, and also opens up a number of new research opportunities.

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• Threatened and significant plant taxa - the ecology and distribution of individual plant taxa is also of research interest, particularly threatened plant species and those that are endemic to the Hunter region. Many of the Hunter’s endemic species (of which there are >100 taxa) are legally protected; however the vast majority are not. It is these unprotected endemic taxa that require further research, as some of these may become threatened in coming years.

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• Restoration of disturbed landscapes - being based in the Hunter Valley of NSW, home to the largest coal export port in the World, I am also interested in the return of native vegetation following coal mining and associated ground disturbances, and in the management of former grazing lands that have been purchased for conservation offsets. As much of the Hunter Valley floor supports threatened ecological communities, it is particularly important that the regeneration of former grazing lands adds to the conservation of these communities.

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• Historical botany - in recent years, I have begun to appreciate the value of the writings and journals of early Australian botanical explorers as they moved through the Hunter region and other parts of New South Wales. The observations made by some of these are truly astounding, and provide important commentary on what the originally vegetation must have been like. Part of my research on plant species and communities incorporates investigation into these historical writings, to aid current-day understanding of the vegetation we see today.