Our team is investigating new ways to tackle the challenge of mass extinction.

Research Fellow, Dr Jasmin Packer, is using innovation and design thinking to nurture people’s connection to nature – to help them help nature.

Just 18 months ago, Jasmin and her family launched Hideyhole (as featured on Adelady), an ethical enterprise dedicated to protecting endangered bandicoots and other native treasures, in the Adelaide Hills biodiversity hotspot. Hideyhole is a tiny hut nestled in nature, built on design thinking, authentic connection and powered by passion.

Image: Jasmin Packer’s Hideyhole Hut, Ironbank South Australia

Hideyhole set out to design and test an idea – would people pay for conservation? Would they stay in a tiny hut, to help care for the forest around it? It turns out they will. This venture has led to Jasmin’s Hideyhole Hut being featured in the 2019 SA Tourism Winter Campaign, and as a 2019 SA Tourism Awards finalist.

The recent United Nations Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services is sobering – and hopeful. We can halt the mass extinctions that are happening – if we discover how to engage the world in transformational change.

Jasmin will be presenting more of her design thinking research at the School for Biological Sciences Research Day on 14 November 2019.

Guest post by Dr Jasmin Packer.