Rachel Lowry: The conservationist with zero tolerance for extinction

“We have 100 national offices around the world, and so there’s 100 versions of me,” Rachel shares. “That’s one of the cool things about what I do: there’s 100 others of me that I can reach out to at any time. 

“We do a lot on Zoom, but when we’re not in COVID time there is an element of travel. I head up to Sydney from time to time for board meetings or key meetings with donors, and I head to Canberra quite a bit. A big part of what we try to achieve is policy and legislative change, which means you need to actually head into Parliament House and engage the decision makers that Australia elects.” 

Giving science a voice 

Science underpins everything Rachel does as a conservationist. 

Her first degree was a Bachelor of Science with a Zoology major at the University of Melbourne. Now, she consults with experts to ensure her team’s conservation strategy is grounded in the best scientific advice.

“We’ve lost our way a little bit in Australia, and we’ve allowed opinion and conjecture to inform policy and debate and things that will impact our future,” Rachel explains. “We need to give our scientists a voice. Find out who the eminent expert is in whatever field you go to, and give them the due respect that they deserve. 

Pay homage to the science, because we would all be in a far better place right now if we lived and operated by those rules. On a climate front, on a biodiversity front, on many fronts.

Using the tools of marketing for good 

Rachel approaches conservation not just as a biological challenge, but a social one too.

“I had that aha moment when I was on a field trip in my third and final year at Melbourne University,” Rachel shares. “We had spent all this time learning about threatened local species, and us students were debating whether Steve Irwin was a good conservationist.

“Someone put forward the case that we can do all the research in the world, but if we don’t teach people to give a damn about our wildlife, that research is going to sit there and collect dust. At the end of the day we’ll just be monitoring species towards extinction. 

“After the end of that discussion, I appreciated what [Steve Irwin] was doing for the conservation sector, because he was engaging kids and the community.” 

But Rachel doesn’t think education alone is enough. 

“The vast majority of threats to our species are driven by human behavior. We need to get people to do things differently. Not just care, not just understand, but do things differently,” Rachel explains. 

“I think that the conservation sector has fallen into the trap of thinking that once people have the awareness of the issue they’re going to behave differently. And there’s a lot of social science research now that shows that awareness does not always lead to behavior change. Someone might know something’s the right thing to do, but if the alternative is more convenient or cheaper, or more likely to appeal to their identity, then they will choose that behavior.”

It was when she discovered the field of conservation psychology that Rachel saw how she could really make an impact. Conservation psychology takes the finely tuned tools of successful marketing, and applies them to shifting behaviours that relate to the environment.

“Marketeers get us to do stuff all the time. Even stuff we don’t want to do. They get us to buy stuff we don’t want and we don’t need because they appeal to our human nature,” Rachel explains. “You need to think more like a marketeer. Remove the barriers to the behavior change that you’re after. Be very targeted and specific about your audience.

We need to understand what motivates human behavior if we’re going to change it.

Don’t Palm Us Off: The power of people 

You’re probably familiar with the Don’t Palm Us Off campaign, which Rachel led during her time as Director of Wildlife Conservation and Science at Zoos Victoria. 

“It was focused on raising awareness of the fact that much of the food that we eat contains palm oil that comes from orangutan habitat. 

“We had a social scientist do a study that showed only around 50% of people had even heard of palm oil before. They had no idea at all. 

“Secondly, all of Australia’s largest food manufacturers were importing unsustainable palm oil that was coming from Malaysia and Indonesia out of rainforests that none of us want to be associated with driving the loss of.” 

The campaign aimed to create public awareness, and channeled this into calls for labeling legislations and putting pressure on manufacturers to take accountability for their palm oil supplies. 

“A year after its peak, awareness was over 90%,” Rachel shares. “And even though we were calling for legislative sustainable palm oil labeling, a number of [manufacturers] did voluntary labeling, because they had so much pressure.”

Whether it’s signing petitions or writing to your favourite manufacturers to express your concerns, consumer power can drive change. 

“It was a moment in my career that I realized the power of people.”

Apathy is our largest threat

According to Rachel, the best way that we can use this power to counter extinction in Australia is to get involved politically. 

“Ultimately, I think the biggest difference Australians can make is to make sure that when we elect people to lead our nation they understand how important our natural assets are to us, and they’re making decisions that are going to ensure longevity and sustainability of the things that we love,” Rachel urges.

“The wildlife and the wild places that make Australia what it is, but we are gradually becoming depleted. 

“We are the only developed nation in the world to make the deforestation hot list. Our rate of mammal extinctions is the worst in the world. 

Apathy is one of our largest threats at the moment.

With Australia’s environmental laws currently up for a once-a-decade review, much of Rachel’s time is being spent campaigning to ensure that they are protected. 

“We’ve just come off the back of an unprecedented bushfire season, where we’ve seen over 3 billion animals become displaced or perish. Despite this, there is a push from our federal government to weaken those laws.

“It’s going to eventuate in accelerated threatened species and habitat loss if it gets through.” 

To find out more about the work Rachel and WWF are doing to combat these changes, head to the End Extinction Campaign webpage.

“We are all banding together to call for independent compliance once and for all,” Rachel shares. “Because to have no independent compliance over our nature laws is the reason we are losing what we are losing, so hard and so fast.”

Rachel encourages all Australians to reach out to their local politicians, the federal environment minister, or even the prime minister. 

Pick up the baton and try hard to call for an independent compliance agency for the environment.

“Zero tolerance for extinction” 

Staying hopeful is a difficult task for many conservation scientists in today’s climate, but Rachel doesn’t have time for doom and gloom. 

“Whilst it’s hard because the stakes are high in the environmental space, I say to my team, ‘It’s ok to have fun.’ Having fun is quite contagious,” Rachel shares. “If we approach our job every day from a state of misery and gloom, it’s not actually going to be a movement that a lot of people are going to want to join. 

“I try to make sure that I have what I call ‘feed the soul moments’, where I get out there and live and breathe the landscape or interact with wildlife. That motivates me to do what I do. I encourage my staff to do that as well. Make that trip, take that day off. Go out there and put the gloves on and dig the holes and do the planting. 

“Even during the bushfires, just to take the time to go out to a koala hospital, and to be able see the number of koalas that were able to receive care was the biggest recharging moment for me.” 

Rachel also looks to the humanitarian sector for evidence as to what can be achieved when the will is there. 

“There is less infant mortality around the world than there was 20 years ago. There are less people dying from malnutrition. A lot of that has come out of big mass campaigns by leading organisations.

You need to start with a first principal bold vision. I just think if we can get hearts and minds behind it, the environment sector can say, ‘No more extinction. Zero tolerance for extinctions. We should not lose another species.’

And Rachel sees this shift beginning to happen.

“I think we are getting better at understanding that people and nature nexus. Conservationists need to start finding solutions that benefit people and nature. That gives me hope, because there is movement there.

“Also just being a mum. It gives you no other option but to keep at it.” 

Connect with Rachel Lowry on LinkedIn, and join the Science Alumni LinkedIn group to stay up to date on latest Alumni news and events.