Vale Ken Rogers

My father, Ken Rogers, died in his sleep on 18th February. He was 81.

Dad made a very substantial contribution to Australian shorebird studies over the years. He was a regular participant in the VWSG field program in the 1980’s (along with the rest of the Rogers family). From 2003 to 2006 he was editor of Stilt, his period at the helm culminating in Stilt 50, a bumper edition (325 pages) which provided a broad (and sobering) overview of shorebird status throughout the flyway. It is still a very useful publication, and it played a role in the increasing emphasis on international shorebird conservation by the AWSG.

Dad’s greatest contribution was less visible. He was a statistical modeller in his working life, and he brought these skills to the Australasian shorebird scene at a time when shorebirds were not a focus of Australian academia. Analysing and publishing the already enormous datasets of the AWSG fell on the shoulders of amateurs, and it was a serious challenge in those days. Dad’s ability to design and carry out rigorous analyses made a huge difference. Moreover, he was very generous with his time, and great fun to work with. He wrote or co-authored quite a lot of papers in the 1990s and 2000’s. There were many more papers in which Dad’s work was done behind the scenes, helping others to get their work to publication standard.

Danny Rogers

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