Associate Professor Mark Lintermans

2021 ASFB Hall of Fame Award

Associate Professor Mark Lintermans, known to many simply as ‘Linto’, is a long-standing and valued member of the Australian Society for Fish Biology, having attended his first ASFB Conference in 1987 in Canberra. Linto has held numerous roles within the Society having been a Convenor of the Alien Fishes Committee (2004-06; 2007-08), Threatened Fishes Committee (2009-2018), and member of Habitat committee and Friends Of The Society committee. He was ASFB President from 2005-2007. Along with Richard Tilzey, Linto is the only multiple recipient of the Donald D. Francois Award for Outstanding Contribution to Fisheries Science. His dedication, work ethic and contributions to ASFB have been huge, and always carried out with ample theatrics and much good humour. He was awarded ASFB Life Membership in 2011. His great passions are the study of ecology, management and conservation of threatened fish, and the impacts and management of alien fish.

Linto began his professional career in 1982 working for the ACT Parks and Conservation Service on a range of terrestrially-focused projects, but soon worked his way to his fish interests. After a long involvement with Murray-Darling Basin fishes, including work on native Trout cod, Macquarie perch, Two-spined blackfish and introduced Redfin perch, trout and Oriental weatherloach, in 2003 Linto branched out to become a part-time consultant to the Murray-Darling Basin Commission (MDBC, now MDBA). Here, he managed the fish research portfolio for the Native Fish Strategy (NFS) and was the fish theme coordinator for the Sustainable Rivers Audit. In 2006 Linto left the ACT Government to join the MDBC NFS team, and then in 2008 moved to the University of Canberra as a Principal Research Fellow.  

Linto has been a stalwart of Australian freshwater fish conservation for more than 30 years, having served on several State and Territory threatened species committees, including as Chair of the NSW Fisheries Scientific Committee (2015-2020). He has been heavily involved in IUCN freshwater fish conservation and was the Oceania/Australia Regional Chair of the IUCN Freshwater Fish Specialist Group from 2013-2016. Linto’s leadership of the ASFB Threatened Fishes Committee culminated in him leading the first IUCN Red List assessment of Australia’s freshwater fish fauna in 2018-19. In 2020, as part of a national team of experts, Linto led the freshwater fish component in the advice for the Wildlife and Threatened Species Bushfire Recovery Expert Panel on impacts of the 2019-20 fires on animal species.

Linto is still actively championing the plight of Australia’s threatened freshwater fish. In 2022 he finally  completed his PhD on the Conservation and Management of Threatened Freshwater Fish and has just formed a consultancy business so he can continue pursuing his threatened fish interests. Linto has published >300 books, chapters, journal papers and reports. His other passions are the Collingwood Football Club, axes, and Furphy water carts.

Associate Professor Mark Lintermans was inducted into ASFBs Hall of Fame in 2021, in recognition for his contributions to the conservation of freshwater fishes and his service to ASFB.