Mr. Brooks research interests are in conservation biology and broad-scale ecology, focussed geographically on tropical forests and taxonomically on birds. Specifically, his ongoing research projects include:

a) "A blueprint for conservation in Africa" using databases on the distribution of all African birds, mammals, snakes and frogs developed at the Zoological Museum, University of Copenhagen (Carsten Rahbek), in collaboration with Conservation International's Center for Applied Biodiversity Science, the University of Cambridge's Conservation Biology Group (Andrew Balmford), and the London Natural History Museum (Paul Williams) to assess priorities for vertebrate conservation across the continent, and to put these findings into practice through regional workshops (to date, for the Upper Guinea region Dec 1999, Ethiopia Feb 2000, the Congo basin Mar 2000, and the Niger basin Jan 2001);

b) Threat to birds following deforestation in 25 biodiversity "hotspots", and their implications for extinction rates, especially in the Philippines (including organization of a workshop on conservation priorities in the country), the South American Atlantic forests, and East Africa;

c) Assessing "Conservation priorities for birds at risk in Latin America" in collaboration with The Nature Conservancy's Wings of the Americas program, the University of Arkansas's Center for Advancd Spatial Technologies, and the London Natural History Museum;

d) Homogenization of the global avifauna, resulting from the selective loss of phylogenetically distinctive and geographically localized species, and from the spread of commensal species, including participation in the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis working group on "Phylogeny and Conservation;"

e) Documentation of bird extinctions for the Committee on Recently Extinct Organisms.

In addition, he is director of Biodiversity Analysis in Cons Biol, CABS, CI; and has published about 60 articles including 8 in Nature or Science.