The "Connectors" seek to deliver the models and paradigms of resilience science to policy makers and practitioners in simple ways so that conservation and development can be practiced more holistically and with regard to knowledge of things like emergence, nested hierarchical systems adaptability, thresholds and transformation.

Active networks of resilience practice are emerging in the fields of environmental planning and impact assessment, water catchment management, forest and ranching systems, the Transition Town movement, and food production and marketing systems.

Mike is primarily concerned with the improvement of practice through transfer of knowledge rather than accumulation of knowledge and has occupied a number of positions in conservation organisations.

In 1973 he joined the Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) Department of National Parks and Wildlife Management as a park ranger before going to the University of Zimbabwe in 1979 where he obtained a Bachelor's Degree with Honours in Zoology in 1981.

Mike continued his conservation career as a Wildlife Ecologist in the Department and worked on many aspects of protected area management until 1995 when he became a full time consultant in the fields such as protected area management, community based natural resource management, tourism development and environmental management.

Mike became interested in the concept of social ecological systems and the practical value of resilience thinking in 2002 when the relevance of this model to community based approaches to conservation (as well as a good many other fields of sustainable development) was immediately apparent and enlightening.