Robbie works full-time as Chief Insights Officer at The Office for Environmental Protection (OEP). This follows a period of secondment from the University of Exeter’s Penryn campus in Cornwall, where he held a Chair in Natural Environment, to which he was appointed in 2011.  As Chief Insights Officer and Chief Scientist at the OEP, Robbie directs the evidence and analysis programme of work that supports OEP’s scrutiny of government’s progress in improving the natural environment.

Robbie’s research career has involved a wide range of interdisciplinary research projects in wildlife ecology and management, with a focus on mustelids and a PhD on weasels and stoats. He has also worked on Californian sea otters, martens, badgers, mink, ferrets and New Zealand and Irish stoats, and has collaborated with VWT on marten and polecat research projects.

He has held a Fulbright Scholarship, Jones Fellowship, Royal Society postdoctoral fellowship, and has worked in universities, NGOs and in government agencies. He led Quercus, the Northern Ireland Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Biology, a partnership between Queens University Belfast and NI Department of Environment. He was then head of wildlife science and Deputy Chief Scientist at the Food and Environment Research Agency. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology. Robbie joined the Board of Trustees in 2017 and became Chair of the Board of Trustees in 2024.