64 Australian Geographic
Linda Parlane
New Zealand-born Linda
Parlane has been a vocal
environmental campaigner
since she moved to Australia
and fell in love with our native
plants. She studied botany, took
part in the campaign to save
Tasmania’s Franklin River and
then spent years working to
protect native forests in eastern
Victoria from woodchipping.
While working as the director of
Environment Victoria between
1990 and 1997, she became
known for her considerable
talents in coordinating
community action, strategy and
fundraising. She currently
volunteers with Cultivating
Community, a non-profit
established to assist in the
development of community
food projects.
Louise Crossley
A Tasmania-based scientist,
adventurer and writer, Louise
became only the second woman
to head an Australian Antarctic
station in 1991, when she
became the leader of Mawson
Station. She had an ongoing role
in the Tasmanian Greens and
was their first convener in 1989.
A passionate environmental
leader and campaigner, she
spearheaded the protection of
Bruny Island’s forests and
highlighted the plight of the
swift parrot and other threat-
ened species. When she died in
2015, tributes poured in from
around the world. “She had a
great no-nonsense intellect,
quick dry wit and keenness to
protect the biosphere, not least
Tasmania’s wild and scenic
beauty,” said Bob Brown.Col Limpus
Col has been a leader in marine turtle research and
conservation since the early 1970s when he marked
130,000 loggerhead turtle hatchlings for tracking. During
the 40 years in which he waited for them to return and lay
eggs, he worked tirelessly on research and the species’
conservation. Following an 80 per cent decline in egg-laying
loggerhead turtles, Col had a breakthrough in 2000 when
he convinced fishers to install turtle hatches in their nets.
The 2004–05 season was the first not to record a decline
in the species and saw the return of Col’s first tagged
turtles from the 1970s. Col is now Chief Scientist
of Queensland’s Threatened Species Unit.Yvonne Margarula
For Mirarr Aboriginal elder Yvonne
Margarula, conservation is a fundamen-
tal survival strategy adopted by her
people for millennia. “You have to look
after country. For your grandfather’s
country and mother country, you need
to take care,” she says. As a traditional
owner of land within Kakadu National
Park, Yvonne has helped bring a holistic
Aboriginal approach to land manage-
ment. Her work was acknowledged in
1998 with the Friends of the Earth
International Environment Award and
Nuclear-free Future Award. In 1999
Yvonne and Jabiru elder Jacqui Katona
shared the conservation equivalent of a
Nobel – the Goldman Environmental
Prize – for campaigning against uranium
mining at Jabiluka, in Kakadu’s north.