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Griffith supports rich and healthy biodiversity through an array of approaches that reduce threatening processes impacting our wild species such as greenhouse gas emissions, pollution and land-clearing. All of this while using our campuses for world-class education that has sustainability at its core.

Griffith University has installed more than 70 nest boxes on Brisbane South (Nathan), including some for the endangered powerful owl. The University also continues to protect important vegetation, including tree species known as habitat and food for the endangered koalas that live on the campus.

Griffith biodiversity Learn more about our wildlife

Researchers at Griffith are collaborating locally and internationally to maintain, protect and extend primary forests in both terrestrial and coastal ecosystems. These efforts include identifying and assessing carbon stocks, evaluating ecosystem services, understanding their role in climate change mitigation, and developing policies for their protection and restoration.

In our GLOW Mangroves project, Griffith University academics work with the World Wildlife Fund (US Oceans team) to ensure climate smart restoration and protection of mangroves locally and globally. Commencing in 2022, and still ongoing, the project maintains, conserves, restores and extends coastal mangrove habitats.

Part One of the project integrates climate models with models of mangrove forest change to predict locations globally that are most likely to be affected by climate impacts to identify where additional adaptation measures and further conservation work will be needed.

Part Two includes local-scale action across the globe to implement climate smart conservation plans for mangroves. This includes adapting restoration techniques so that restored habitat is more resilient to climate change.

GLOW Mangroves project

The É«ÇéÍøÕ¾n Rivers Institute addresses the need to improve the success and sustainability of restoration and rehabilitation efforts for shared land and water systems, maintain, conserving, and restoring ecosystems and their biodiversity. Many of our catchments and aquatic ecosystems – and the services they provide – are degraded. Millions of dollars are spent on their repair, often with limited success. At the Institute, we focus on understanding the impacts of stressors on all aspects of catchments and associated aquatic ecosystems, and developing tools to optimise investment in on-ground actions.

The É«ÇéÍøÕ¾n Rivers Institute also joined forces with the É«ÇéÍøÕ¾n Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) in a collaborative effort to foster the creation of a robust framework for response assessment for sustainable management in the Philippines. This framework, developed between 2021 and 2022, and implemented in 2023 and 2024, is geared towards enhancing our comprehension of the efficacy of strategies aimed at mitigating and adapting to land, soil, and water.

Based on catchment-scale research, a new data-driven investment decision-making tool has been developed. The research, led by Griffith University’s É«ÇéÍøÕ¾n Rivers Institute from 2019-2023, integrates flood mapping data with environmental and economic data, so different investment and management scenarios can be explored from a catchment-scale perspective, through an easy-to-use visualisation tool. The tool highlights the economic benefits to downstream industries that rely on healthy catchments, to help prioritise industry investment in green infrastructure solutions, while also providing landowners with long-term maintenance and opportunity costs of changing land use practices. This initiative is used to guide water security and implementation of nature-based solutions to reduce flooding and improve water quality, and thus forms part of the Institute’s work to directly maintain and conserve vulnerable ecosystems and their biodiversity, including plants and animals.

In collaboration with the Earth Commission, Griffith is dedicated to the rigorous scientific delineation and quantification of a safe and equitable corridor for the well-being of both humanity and the planet. Fundamental to all life on Earth are essential elements such as clean air and water, biodiversity, thriving oceans, and a stable climate. Through the concerted efforts of our working groups, the Earth Commission scrutinises strategies for safeguarding our planet in a manner that ensures not only environmental sustainability, but also upholds human well-being within the bounds of ecological limits while promoting conservation and the extension of biodiversity across the globe.

The É«ÇéÍøÕ¾n Rivers Institute also joined forces with the É«ÇéÍøÕ¾n Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) in a collaborative effort to foster the creation of a robust framework for response assessment for sustainable management in the Philippines. This framework, developed between 2021 and 2022, and implemented in 2023 and 2024, is geared towards enhancing our comprehension of the efficacy of strategies aimed at mitigating and adapting to land, soil, and water degradation.