Richard Hobbs is professor of the School of Plant Biology at The University of Western Australia, Australia. He is a distinguished ecologist, with experience in Australia, United Kingdom, Europe and United States. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and a Highly Cited Researcher in Ecology and Environment. He is the past Editor in Chief of the journal Restoration Ecology between 2005 and 2014.

He completed his PhD at the University of Aberdeen, working on post-fire dynamics of heathland communities, and then worked on serpentine grassland dynamics as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University 1982-84. He joined CSIRO Division of Wildlife & Ecology in Western Australia in 1984 and worked on the dynamics of fragmented ecosystems in the Western Australian wheatbelt. He became Officer in Charge of the Western Australian laboratory in 1997, was Professor of Environmental Science at Murdoch University 2000-2009, and joined the University of Western Australia in 2009.

He currently leads the Ecosystem Restoration & Intervention Ecology (ERIE) Research Group, within the School of Plant Biology. His particular interests are in vegetation dynamics and management, fragmentation, invasive species, ecosystem restoration, conservation biology and landscape ecology. His current research focuses on developing effective management interventions in a rapidly changing world.

Over the course of his career, he has written extensively in the areas of vegetation dynamics and management, ecosystem fragmentation, ecosystem rehabilitation and restoration, landscape ecology, and conservation biology.  He has written and/or edited more than 20 books, 130 book chapters, and 260 refereed journal papers.