New Zealand Plant Protection Medal recipient Dr Brian Richardson (centre), with his nominators Dr Justin Nairn (left) and Dr Toni Withers (right)
Dr Brian Richardson, a Scion Principal Scientist in pest management, has been awarded the New Zealand Plant Protection Medal at the recent 75th New Zealand Plant Protection Society anniversary and conference. Source: Timberbiz
Joining the New Zealand Forest Service in 1983, they nurtured his potential, sponsoring him to do a PhD at Oregon State University. Dr Richardson then returned to the NZ Forest Service and has built a distinguished career to date.
His early research in weed/tree competition and dose response models helped define the forest industry’s best practice approach to vegetation management and supported the ongoing use of herbicides, essential for cost-effective tree establishment in forestry.
More recently, his expertise in pesticide application has been used to generate guidelines for effective aerial spraying for eradication of wilding conifers. These guidelines are now used nationally by the Wilding Conifer Control Program to underpin good practice.
Dr Richardson’s expertise has facilitated development of internationally recognised spray drift models (such as AGDISP), now used widely in the science and regulatory community to underpin assessment of risk during pesticide.
More than just plants, he leant his expertise to the Painted Apple Moth eradication, and the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug technical advisory group. He also played a primary role in establishing the Stakeholders in Methyl Bromide Reduction Group and the Forest Biosecurity Council; and serving as a board member on many research programs (Better Border Biosecurity, BioProtection Research Centre and Frontline Biosecurity).
Dr Richardson also used his outstanding leadership skills at Scion (various program manager and general manager roles) to mentor and support young scientists, to propel them into science careers in Forest Protection.
Many of these are now exemplary leaders across the plant protection space, in science, government and industry. This is an outcome of dedicated commitment to helping others to write complex funding proposals, undertake difficult analyses or overcome conceptual challenges to publish excellent papers.
While Dr Richardson has recently taken the opportunity to work with Forest Growers Research to lead a nationally significant precision silviculture program aimed at accelerating New Zealand forestry into the future. Yet, he maintains his principal scientist role at Scion, at reduced time capacity, to continue his outstanding leadership and mentorship in forestry science.
