Since his retirement in 2003 as Principal Research Scientist, after around 32 years with the NSW Fisheries Research Institute, and since his appointment as a Research Associate with the Department of Ichthyology at the Australian Museum, Dr Dave Pollard has mainly been working, as a member of various of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Species Survival Commission (SSC) marine fish specialist groups (including the Groupers and Wrasses SG; the Snappers, Sea-breams and Grunts SG; the Sharks and Rays SG; and the Tunas and Billfishes SG), in the scientific assessment of the conservation/threat status of a wide variety of marine fish species belonging to these various taxonomic groups, particularly in relation to their potential inclusion in the IUCN's Red List (RL) of Threatened Species. This ongoing work has involved mainly species conservation assessments of various groupers (Epinephelidae), wrasses (Labridae) and sea-breams (Sparidae), as well as some work on sharks and rays (chondrichthyans), and also tunas (Scombridae) and puffer-fishes (Tetraodontidae). In addition to working on the global assessments for these specific taxonomic species groups, as part of this Red Listing work Dave has also been involved in regional RL assessments of the entire marine fish fauna of the Mediterranean Sea, and most recently that of the whole of Europe in general.

In addition to the above work Dave has also assisted in advising on threat assessments of both marine teleostean fishes and sharks and rays in northern New South Wales waters in relation to reports produced for the NSW Northern Rivers Catchment Management Authority (NRCMA); and he is also a regular reviewer of scientific papers on fish biology and ecology, and on marine protected areas and related marine conservation ecology topics, for several international scientific journals.