About the Author

Geoffrey Mc Iver Cunningham was a Soil Conservationist with the Department of Conservation and Land Management. He runs his own consultancy company - Geoff Cunningham Natural Resource Consultants Pty Ltd. William Edward Mulham began his career with CSIRO at Deniliquin in 1948 and until retiring in December, 1986 had spent almost 30 years of involvement with research projects in the rangelands of western NSW. During his 30 years of involvement with the rangelands of western NSW, Bill worked on a variety of projects related to the natural environment under a wide range of seasonal and management impacts. He has been associated, mostly as a joint author, with the publication of over 20 papers in scientific journals, on studies such as plant population dynamics, herbivore diets, impact of domestic herbivores and fire on rangeland vegetation, range condition monitoring, and selection and testing of introduced forage plants. On his retirement in 1986 his position within the CSIRO Division of Wildlife and Ecology, Rangelands Research Unit, Deniliquin, was that of Experimental Scientist. After retirement he undertook a number of private consulting projects involving plant dynamics and vegetation assessment. Peter Lindsay Milthorpe commenced work with the Soil conservation Service of NSW in 1967, principally undertaking agrostological and advisory work. From 1969 Peter co-developed, implemented and managed a resource inventory scheme using land system mapping in semi-arid NSW. The data collected from this work forms the basis for property planning, developing management strategies and for preparing regional environmental assessments. John Holland Leigh retired as a Senior Principal Research Scientist with CSIRO Division of Plant Industry in the mid-1990s. During the period 1960-1969 he was based at CSIRO's Riverina Laboratory at Deniliquin where he undertook research into animal-plant relationships in several semi-arid vegetation communities. After his transfer to Canberra, John continued to examine the interactions between fire and grazing animals on sub-alpine and high rainfall grasslands. John has also been involved in categorising the risk status of rare and threatened Australian plants and promoting their conservation. During his career, John prepared over 90 peer-reviewed papers, six books and numerous book chapters.