Marc Hockings is Emeritus Professor in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Queensland. Prior to joining the University in 1992, Marc worked in the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service (QPWS) for 16 years.
He is a long-term member of the WCPA and served on the Steering Committee of the Commission for 20 years. He is also a member of the IUCN Species Survival Commission and the Commission on Ecosystem Management. Marc is Managing Editor of the IUCN journal PARKS: The international journal of protected areas and conservation. In 2008, he received the Kenton R. Miller Award for Innovation in Protected Area Sustainability for his work on management effectiveness and in 2021 he received the WCPA Chair’s Award for his work as Editor of PARKS.
Marc remains extremely active in international and national conservation science, issues and advocacy. He is a member of the Advisory Group to the IUCN WCPA Chair and leads the Commission’s work on the IUCN Green List of Protected and Conserved Areas (The IUCN Green List standard is an internationally accepted standard of good management of protected and conserved areas).
He has led a number of projects related to assessment of protected area management. In 2016, he led an independent analysis of NSW’s public protected areas framework in relation to national and international best practice principles that was conducted by the University of Queensland’s consulting arm, UniQuest (Dr Fiona Leverington was also a principal consultant on this project). In 2020, along with colleagues from the University of Queensland, he led development of a Monitoring, Evaluation, Reporting and Improvement (MERI) framework for Parks Australia. He has led international reviews of protected area management in Colombia, Thailand, South Korea and Ecuador.