Describe your role, particularly in relation to working within grassland environments.

I work at the Royal Botanic Gardens as a Conservation Botanist. There’s two main parts to my job. One is to do research on poorly known plant groups and, where necessary, give them names and descriptions so that they can be identified. There are still quite a few plants in Victoria that don’t have names – they’re mostly rare species. The other part of my job is helping to try and conserve rare species in the state. This can be done by giving advice on things like: Just how rare are some species? What’s the best way to protect them? Grasslands contain some species that are still unnamed, and many rare species, so both parts of my job have quite a bit to do with grasslands.