In 1957, I was elected to Council and the next year to the position of Secretary, Biological Sciences. In those early days, just after completion of the Dome, the officers' jobs were not as demanding as they are now, and my appointment greatly broadened my views of biological science. As early as 1955, the first Secretary (Biological Sciences), entomologist Dr A. J. Nicholson, had brought the need for a proper study of Australia's fauna to the attention of Council. Apart from general support by the Directors of the Australian Museum in Sydney (Dr John Evans) and the Western Australian Museum (Dr David Ride), little was done until 1959–60, when two initiatives from Fellows resident in Adelaide, Professors J. G. Wood and W. P. Rogers, resurrected the idea of a national biological survey in a wider context and asked the Academy to look at problems of the flora as well as the fauna.

It took the success of a proposal by physical scientists for Commonwealth support for a large optical telescope in Australia to prompt a letter to me, as Secretary (Biological Sciences) from several Fellows who were biologists, pointing out the discrepancies between government support for major projects in the physical sciences and the biological sciences. In March 1960, I therefore set up a Fauna and Flora Committee, of which I was initially a member and, from 1967–74, Chairman, ‘To prepare a detailed scheme for the implementation of major research projects in the biological sciences in Australia, with special emphasis on the fauna and flora’. Several initiatives arose from the work of this committee (Fenner, 2005a). In July 1961, the President of the Academy (Professor Tom Cherry) wrote to the Vice-Chancellor of The Australian National University, Leonard Huxley, pointing out the desirability of establishing a Research School of Biological Sciences in the Institute of Advanced Studies. Instead of posting this letter to the Vice-Chancellor, who was also Secretary (Physical Sciences) at the time, I handed it to him. There was no reply for several months, and it transpired that Huxley had put my letter into a drawer until he had persuaded the Prime Minister to support the establishment of a Research School of Chemistry. Both were eventually established, Chemistry in 1964 and Biological Sciences in 1967.

In January 1962, Cherry wrote to the Prime Minister with two more proposals from the Fauna and Flora Committee: the establishment of a Research Museum of Australian Biology in Canberra, to carry out a National Biological Survey of Australia; and the appointment of an editor and staff to compile a comprehensive Flora of Australia. After long delays the Prime Minister finally replied, in April 1965, saying that ‘Government finance…cannot be provided at present’. In 1967, I wrote to Bob Walsh, then Secretary (Biological Sciences), saying that I had written an informal letter to my old colleague Hugh Ennor, then Secretary of the Department of Education and Science, bringing to his attention the urgency of action on the Fauna and Flora Committee's Report. Walsh reactivated the Committee and established botanical and zoological subcommittees. I was a member of the Committee and the zoological subcommittee. The latter then visited all State museums to ascertain the position of their zoological collections. I found this a very interesting exercise. The final Report of the Fauna and Flora Committee was published in 1968 (Flora and Fauna Committee, 1968). In March 1969, a deputation from the Academy met the Minister for Science and Education (Malcolm Fraser) and Macfarlane Burnet, then nearing the end of his term as President, told the minister that he thought the proposal for an Australian Biological Resources Study was the most important project to be proposed by the Academy. No decision was reached at this time, but, in August 1972, I gave evidence on behalf of the Academy's Fauna and Flora Committee to the House of Representatives Select Committee on Wildlife Conservation, which subsequently recommended ‘that a biological survey be established by the Commonwealth Government to undertake on a continuing basis surveys of birds, mammals and reptiles and their ecology and to establish a national collection of wildlife species’. In August 1973, the new Labor Minister for Science (W. Morrison) announced the establishment of the Australian Biological Resources Study, which now operates within the Parks Australia Division of the Department of the Environment and Heritage, and provides grants to researchers on taxonomy, maintains substantial databases and produces a wide range of publications.