Person

Minton, Clive Dudley Thomas (1934 - 2019)

AM

Born
7 October 1934
England
Died
6 November 2019
Dunkeld, Victoria, Australia
Occupation
Business executive, Metallurgist and Ornithologist

Summary

Clive Minton was a businessman, and trained as a metallurgist, but his major interest from childhood was in wading birds. This led him to found the Wash Wader Ringing Group, the largest wader banding group in the world. He was a pioneer in the use of mist nets and cannon-netting for the trapping, banding and release of shore birds. After coming to Australia 1978 he became a leader in studies of these birds. As founding chairman of both the Victorian Wader Study Group and the Australasian Wader Studies Group, he remained integrally involved with their activities until his death. For over 40 years Minton led the North-west Australia Shorebird Expeditions to study waders migrating through the coastal region in Western Australia in the area of Broome, the vital southern section of the East Asian-Australasian Flyway. He was instrumental in the establishment of the Broome Bird Observatory in 1988 by Birds Australia. In addition Minton co-lead the monitoring of Corner Inlet, Victoria's principal shorebird site, for nearly 40 years. Minton was heavily involved in the establishment of the Asian Wetland Bureau and the recognition of the East Asian Flyway through China to Siberia, resulting in the Japan-Australia Migratory Birds Agreement and the China-Australia Migratory Birds Agreement. He also participated in several international wader study expeditions in North America, South America and Russia.

Skip to

Details

Chronology

1957
Education - Bachelor of Arts (BA), University of Cambridge
1959
Education - Master of Arts (MA), University of Cambridge
1960
Education - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Cambridge
1970
Career position - Founding Chair, Wader Study Group, United Kingdom
1975
Award - Bernard Tucker Medal for Services to Ornithology
1978 - 1983
Career position - Managing Director, Imperial Metal Industries Australia
1978 - 2018
Career position - Chairman (initially Convenor), Victorian Wader Study Group
1980 - 1985
Career position - Founding Chair, Australasian Wader Studies Group
1986 - 1988
Career position - Deputy Chief General Manager, Director of Policy Programmes, Health Department of Victoria
1988 - 1992
Career position - Partner and Director of Melbourne Office, TASA International Executive Search
1989 - 1995
Career position - Vice-President, Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union
1998 - 2011
Award - Fellow, Birds Australia
2000
Award - J. N. Hobbs Memorial Medal, Birds Australia
2001
Award - Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for service to ornithology, particularly in the study of migratory wading birds in Australia
2003
Award - Australian Natural History Medallion
2012
Award - Eisenmann Medal, Linnaean Society of New York
2012 - 2019
Award - Fellow. BirdLife Australia
2013 - 2019
Award - Life Member, Victorian Wader Study Group

Related Corporate Bodies

Published resources

Books

Journal Articles

  • Jessop, Rosalind, Graham, Doris, Collins, Peter and Davidson, Rosemary, 'John Hobbs Medal 2000: citation - Clive Dudley Minton MA PhD', Emu, 100 (2000), 247. Details
  • Minton, C., 'Objectives of the VWSG [Victorian Wader Studies Group]', Stilt: the journal of the East Asian-Australasian flyway, 1 (1981), 3-4. Details
  • Minton, C., 'The history of wader studies in north-west Australia', Stilt: the journal of the East Asian-Australasian flyway, 50 (2006), 224-34. Details
  • Minton, C., 'The history and achievements of the Victorian Wader Study Group', Stilt: the journal of the East Asian-Australasian flyway, 50 (2006), 285-94. Details
  • Phillips, Hugo, 'Clive Minton - some personal reflections', VWSG bulletin, 43 (2020), 48-9. Details
  • Russell-French, Alison, 'Death of a legend: Dr Clive Dudley Thomas Minton, AM, (7/10/1934 - 6/11/2019)', Tattler: newsletter for the Asia Pacific Flyways & Australian Shorebirds 2020, 48 (speciall issue) (2019), 10-1. Details
  • Russell-French, Alison, 'Dr Clive Dudley Thomas Minton, AM, (7/10/1934 - 6/11/2019)', Stilt, 73/4 (2020), 1-3. Details
  • Sitters, Humphrey; [ and others], 'Clive Dudley Thomas Minton 1 October 1934 - 6 November 2019', Wader study, 127 (2) (2020), 94-101. https://www.waderstudygroup.org/article/13811/. Details
  • Sitters, Humphrey; [and others], 'Obituary: Clive Dudley Thomas Minton 7 October 1934 - 6 November 2019', VWSG bulletin, 43 (2020), 50-2, https://vwsg.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/VWSG-Bulletin-43.pdf. Details
  • Wettenhall, Norman, 'RAOU Fellow citation: Clive Minton MA PhD', Emu, 98 (1998), 241. Details

Newspaper Articles

  • Allen, Katie, 'Revolutionary in the study of wader birds: Clive Dudley Thomas Minton, AM; October 7, 1934 - November 1, 2019', Sydney Morning Herald (2019). Details

Resources

See also

  • Robin, Libby, The Flight of the Emu: a Hundred Years of Australian Ornithology 1901-2001 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001), 492 pp. Details

Rosanne Walker and Helen Cohn

Created: 30 June 1997, Last modified: 8 February 2022

EOAS ID: biogs/P003075b.htm

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
What do we mean by this?

Published by Swinburne University of Technology.
This Edition: 2024 November (Ballambar - Gariwerd calendar - early summer - season of butterflies)
Reference: http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/calendars/gariwerd.shtml#ballambar
For earlier editions see the Internet Archive at: https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.eoas.info

The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation uses the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM), a relational data curation and web publication system developed by the eScholarship Research Centre and its predecessors at the University of Melbourne 1999-2020. The OHRM has been maintained by Gavan McCarthy since 2020.

Cite this page: https://www.eoas.info/biogs/P003075b.htm

"... the rengitj, as a visible mark or imprint on the land, is characterised as a place of origin, the repository of all names, as well as a kind of mapped visual expression of the connection between people and places which is to be carried out in the temporal sequence of the journey." Fanca Tamisari (1998) 'Body, Vision and Movement: In the footprints of the ancestors'. Oceania 68(4) p260