Who We Are

Nature Needs More Ltd. is a non-profit organisation incorporated as a public company in Australia. We are a registered charity with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC). Lynn Johnson, Peter Lanius and Cameron Murray are the directors of the company and Lynn is the CEO. For brief biographies of Lynn, Peter and Cameron please see below.

Nature Needs More is the evolution of the Breaking The Brand project; this project was dedicated to designing and delivering demand reduction campaigns to the primary consumers of rhino horn in Viet Nam. It has also been very influential in the wider conservation sector in terms of educating the sector about how to design and target demand reduction and behaviour change campaigns.

In 2017, Lynn and Peter decided to create Nature Needs More, because we, as citizens who care about the natural world, felt we needed to be more active in protecting it. We have a lifelong passion for wildlife and have the skills and time contribute significantly to modernising the conservation sector. Given the scale of the extinction crisis ‘business as usual’ is not an option and the traditional conservation approach is not enough; the trade in flora and fauna was confirmed as the second biggest threat to species survival in the May 2019 IPBES Report which states that up to 1 million species are potentially facing extinction

Because of our background as executive coaches and consultants to business and government, we understand trade and politics, which are central to protecting wildlife from over-exploitation; the ‘sustainable use’ model is not a panacea and its value has been over generalised. As behaviour change experts, we know how to design targeted demand reduction and social marketing campaigns.

Focusing on the legal and illegal wildlife trade and demand reduction, including the redirection of desire away from consumption to contribution are thus a perfect fit for our skills which we have honed in over 20 years as coaches and consultants. We have added alternatives to the ‘sustainable use’ model of development aid, such as the Basic Income model, to the scope of what Nature Needs More works on to be able to push back on the current over-reliance on trade and the constant demand for economic growth.

You can find out more about What We Do here.

Lynn Johnson, Founder and CEO

Lynn originates from the UK and after several years working in Germany she moved to Australia in 1996. She holds a PhD in particle physics. Lynn’s career has taken her from being a research physicist, working in the world of fire and explosives, to management consulting and becoming the CEO of a charity in 1998. In 2001 Lynn started her own consulting and coaching business, Leadership Mastery, which grew to be a well respected boutique consultancy, before de-merging and selling parts of the business in 2010. Lynn has extensive experience in designing & delivering behaviour change interventions and business strategy development. She has delivered such interventions to more than 3,000 clients in the private and public sectors. She has further designed and delivered behaviour change programs for at-risk young adults and long-term unemployed groups.

As part of a lifelong passion for wildlife conservation Lynn decided to formalise her commitment by creating Breaking The Brand in 2013. In her conservation work Lynn’s key focus has been demand reduction campaigns, targeting the primary users of rhino horn in Viet Nam. She has conducted the research into the users and designed and delivered the campaigns, raising over USD $250K since 2014. She has also researched the luxury industry and how it manufactures demand. In addition, Lynn is continuing her research Re-Inventing Magnificence: The Motivation to Contribute into what motivates people to make a step change in their lives and start contributing their wealth and time to society and the natural world. Lynn has also acquired broader knowledge of the illegal wildlife trade and has been invited to present her research at various conferences and symposiums.

Lynn has a long-standing interest in wildlife conservation. She has traveled to a number of African and Asian countries in recent years as part of our conservation efforts.

Peter Lanius, Director

Lynn’s partner in life and business, Peter originates from Berlin, Germany and moved to Australia in 1996. He holds a PhD in particle physics. Peter spent the first ten years of his career as a consultant and project manager in the IT&T industry. He held senior project management positions in blue-chip companies including Hewlett-Packard, Telstra and Texas Instruments. In early 2003 Peter joined Lynn and became a director of Leadership Mastery where his focus has been executive coaching, business strategy development and business coaching. He has also been the primary finance manager for all our business ventures.

Peter has assisted Lynn’s work in Breaking The Brand and in 2017 joined her in becoming a director of Nature Needs More. His focus has been research, understanding the details of how CITES currently works and writing reports.

Over the last 17 years Peter and Lynn have provided strategy and business consulting together with executive coaching to CEOs and senior managers of large and medium sized private, NGO and public sector clients. Our core business expertise is in coaching, strategy, behaviour change, culture change and project management.

Cameron Murray, Director

Cameron was raised in rural Western Australia on a sheep and wheat farm about 3 hours south east of Perth, in Tincurrin. He graduated from Murdoch University Veterinary School in 1994 before spending time in mixed practice in Esperance, on the south coast of WA, and then the UK. Since returning to Perth in 2000 he has worked in small animal general practice with more than two decades as a practice owner. Since 2013 he has served as a committee member of SAVE African Rhino Foundation, a Perth based rhino conservation charity, involved primarily with projects in Zimbabwe. It was through this organisation that Cameron met Lynn and Peter.

In his spare time he is a keen cyclist, having become too slow for field hockey, which he says is good for the body and the brain. Cameron loves getting back out to the country, either on the family farm or enjoying camping expeditions which have been a key component of family holidays over his lifetime, as a child and now as a parent.