Melbourne’s Hidden Biodiversity, Mapped

Every day, Melbourne’s wildlife goes about its business right under our noses. A rakali, Australia’s bloodthirsty answer to the otter, could be hunting yabbies in the creek you cross on the way to work. A native bee smaller than your fingernail might be feeding on the flowers on your nature strip. The old River Red Gum in your local park may have been growing there before the city had streets. And most of us walk straight past.

The University of Melbourne's Map of the Month series set out to close that gap between what lives in our city and what we notice. Researchers and data specialists took hundreds of public sightings, a decade of fieldwork on bees and flowers, and survey maps drawn nearly 200 years ago, and turned them into maps anyone can read. 

In this panel, urban ecologists Dr Kylie Soanes, Dr Julian Brown and Professor Nick Williams join Dr Emily Fitzgerald, who turned the data behind the series into its maps. They’ll share what surprised them, including what the blank spaces on a map can tell us, and how anyone with a phone camera can help fill those spaces in.

Come and discover the plants and animals you’ve been walking past, and the small changes that can help them thrive.