Nicholas Carlile commenced ecological research with the Australian Museum in 1986 and since 1988 with NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service. His ecological and botanical interests were brought together with a long-term project on the recovery and conservation of Australia’s rarest endemic seabird, Gould’s petrel. As part of the species’ recovery the island was restored to its pre-European state and became a model for island restoration in NSW. Awarded a Churchill Fellowship for 2000, he studied petrels in Hawaii, Madeira and Bermuda and continue to work in Bermuda on the recovery of their endemic petrel for much of the next decade. His work includes island biodiversity restorations of flora and fauna, vertebrate and invertebrate surveys and research into seabirds and their translocation and has taken him to New Caledonia, Fiji and South Africa.