conducted extensive innovative ecology research in the Australian alpine environment where extensive over-grazing by cattle and sheep was causing soil erosion and degradation of a delicate ecosystem. Permits to graze these high plains commenced in the late 1880s and the changes wrought by the hooved animals facilitated the arrival (in 1920s) of rabbits which caused further change. Additional motivation for the studies was prompted by the soil siltation threat to the soon to be constructed Kiewa Hydroelectric Scheme. Carr was the first research officer of the Soil Conservation Board and was responsible for establishing exclusion fencing on reference plots in Bogong High Plains. Having excluded grazing from select high-plains plots (and not from adjacent plots), Carr and team members recorded changes in regrowth vegetation (both type and density) over decades. In the early years, Carr surveyed these plots via horseback on her own but over subsequent years with teams of participants (from department of botany, University of Melbourne), these plots have become the longest continuous series of ecological data-sites in Australia. Chronology of alpine ecology events The sequence of significant events in alpine ecology and Maisie Carr's role is detailed below: 1944: Soil Conservation Board established – Maisie Carr Research Officer 1945: Establishment of exclusion plots in Rocky Valley 1946: Establishment of exclusion plots in Pretty Valley 1947: Publication of Report on the Ecology of Hume Catchment 1966: One of Carr's final High Plains expeditions 1968: Grazing gradually withdrawn from Kosciuszko National Park 1991: Grazing phased out to 20% of Bogong High Plains 2005: Grazing banned from Victorian Alpine National Park Eucalypt taxonomy While initiating foundation alpine ecology studies, Carr became frustrated with the inadequacy of published floras and responded by preparing a botanical key. This has evolved into a teaching collection of 100-200 plant specimens from that region of north-east Victoria which is still in use for teaching and research field work purposes today. Much of this early taxonomy work was undertaken while she was employed at University of Melbourne (beginning in 1949) in the Botany Department headed at the time by Prof. J. S. Turner. In addition to her research interests, she lectured on plant taxonomy as well as ecology (to science and agricultural students) becoming a senior lecturer in that department three years later. Together with Professor John Stewart Turner she published academic reports of the results of the exclusion fencing experiments and more broadly the destructive