Pat Guinane B. Env. Sc. Dip. Nat. Res. Mgt. BAM Assessor Accreditation Number BAAS19018

Pat is the senior Ecologist at Macrozamia Environmental, he brings to the business a range of experience from both private enterprise as well as NSW and Commonwealth Government environmental assessment roles. He has been an Environmental Consultant in NSW for over 10 years working on a range of sustainable developments including residential, industrial, extractive industry and public infrastructure.

Pat has applied his ecology and sustainable environmental management experience in environments across Australia as well as South Asia and draws on all these experiences to deliver effective environmental planning outcomes for Macrozamia Environmental clients.

Pat is an Accredited Assessor with the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage and can undertake assessments under the NSW Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016 applying the Biodiversity Assessment Method.

Christina Lipka M.Sc Biology

Christina, a specialised ecologist has worked as an environmental consultant providing assessment, monitoring, and guidance for various projects including one of the main powerline constructions in the North of Germany, enabling the distribution of power generated in offshore wind farms throughout the country. She has been involved with endeavours in various ecosystems throughout the world including the African Continent, Western and Eastern Europe, and Australia. She has worked in terrestrial, coastal, arboreal and marine environments demonstrating a versatility in her ability to adapt her knowledge base to suit varied ecologies. Christina enlarged her skill set with planning and accomplishing various novel environmental monitoring methods, identifying hazards and developing solutions in liaison with stakeholders that comply with environmental law and is currently located on Christmas Island, assessing the Abbott’s booby population trend within her PhD.

Nathan Harris B.Sc (Forestry) Hons, PG Dip Sci.

With over 25 years of experience in the environment field, Nathan comes to Macrozamia Environmental with a diverse skill set and a substantial depth of appreciation of complex environmental issues.

Nathan grew up around the Northern Territory and maintains links with a number of indigenous communities.  It was here that his love of the natural world and appreciation of conservation matters began.  Nathan studied forestry at the Australian National University in Canberra and began his environment career with the Western Australian Government as a Forest Officer.  He then took on post-graduate study at the University of Queensland specialising in the application of forest science to developing country issues, broadening his science qualifications to include sociology and economics. Returning to Canberra Nathan worked firstly with the Resource Assessment Commission and then with the Commonwealth Environment Department for some 20 years, his last role involving management and administration of the EPBC Act across NSW and the ACT.

The specialist areas of capability that Nathan brings to Macrozamia Environmental are: communication and interpersonal skills, conceptual analysis and the production of high quality writing.  These and other capabilities have been developed through working in numerous and often challenging roles in the government sector ranging across policy development, grants program implementation, market-based instruments, National Parks and MPA management and environmental regulation.  Nathan specialises in situations of high personal engagement, process trouble-shooting and solution brokering in complex situations.

Nathan is excited to be joining the team and believes that “the smooth and successful navigation of environmental issues involves an interdisciplinary approach, consistent, high-quality work and excellent engagement with people.”  Macrozamia Environmental is all about a values-driven approach, one that is fresh, creative and flexible, but also backed-up by decades of collective experience in solid field work, technically proficiency and excellent translation of engagement and data into usable and respectable results.

Django Van Tholen B.Env. Sci (hons), M.Env.

Django is an Environmental Scientist with 12 years professional experience working in Australia and internationally on various projects that span water resources, aquatic ecology, aquaculture, and the environment sector. A combination of experiences in the Australian water industry and environmental consulting alongside his tertiary studies have built a strong set of research, technical and management skills with a strong understanding of interdisciplinarity across the sciences and related fields.

Recent project experience includes contributions of technical reporting for State Significant Development for solar farm Environmental Impact Statement. Contributions to Review of Environmental Factors and addendums, Biodiversity Development Assessments, Tests of Significance, Biodiversity Assessments and other environmental planning desktop and background assessment. 

Additional work in the aquatic ecology field over the last few years has included undertaking intertidal and estuarine ecological surveys and working offshore to collect benthic sediment and macro invertebrate samples as part of marine ecology specialist studies for EIS, including microscopy and macroinvertebrate identification. Water quality monitoring and reporting has been undertaken on Wonboyn, Towamba, Nullica, Curalo, Bega, Murruh and Wallaga river estuaries for post-bushfire water quality impacts on the far south coast NSW. Further west, he has also taken part in fish habitat mapping with single beam sonar over several hundred kms of the Lachlan River around Oxley and Carrathool. Further, there have been several years of involvement in surface water quality monitoring, AUSRIVAS methods including microscopy and macroinvertebrate identification for aquatic health assessment and targeted investigations of PFAS at Melbourne Tullamarine Airport. This sits alongside contaminated land investigations in the Port of Melbourne, site supervision for a contaminated land remediation project in Bega, and environmental monitoring for the Port of Burnie maintenance dredging works. Work has included site aerial mapping with the use of drone, photogrammetry and GIS to produce accurate project maps with the use of RTK surveying and ground control. 

He is also currently involved in the early stages of developing a conservation monitoring program for the Endangered Australian Grayling (Prototroctes maraena) on the Brogo River, Bega Valley.

Along with the experience above, he also brings to Macrozamia a keen eye for detail, lateral thinking and problem solving and an interest to be part of a team delivering projects on time within scope and having robust science.