Tom Le Breton is a plant and fire ecologist with an interest in threatened species assessment and conservation. His PhD thesis was focused on assessing how fire regimes are changing at scales ranging from local to global and understanding the consequences for plant species and vegetation. Additionally, Tom has worked extensively and published on threatened species risk assessment, including leading the national assessment of 260 plant species impacted by the 2019-2020 Black Summer fires.

He has been involved in international collaborations, and is working with the IUCN Species Survival Commission to establish an Australian Plant Species Specialist Group to advance plant conservation in collaboration with researchers and practitioners across the country.

In his role as Research Associate with the BNHRC, based at the University of New South Wales, Tom is now focussing on applying a developing framework for fire management of ecological communities to case studies in Threatened Ecological Communities.