Wilderness Celebrating Australia's Protected Places

Description

On a winter's day in 1976, a band of young conservationists gathered at the foot of Tasmania's highlands to create a new organisation, the Tasmanian Wilderness Society. The ensuing battle to save the Franklin River from being dammed for hydroelectricity changed Australian constitutional history and established the new organisation's reputation for determination, grass-roots action and defiance. These qualities were taken to campaigns for wild nature right across Australia after the organisation changed its name to `The Wilderness Society' in 1983. The rewards have been new national parks and World Heritage Areas protecting some of Australia's most beautiful, biodiverse and majestic landscapes, including Kakadu, the Daintree rainforest, East Gippsland, the Kimberley, the Great Australian Bight and, of course, the wilderness of western Tasmania.This book is a celebration of those landscapes and the strenuous efforts made to protect them. Photographs by some of Australia's most celebrated wilderness photographers - including the late Peter Dombrovskis - are interspersed with tales of the vision and audacity exemplified by one of the nation's premier organisations. But the book is also a call to action. With the rapid onset of climate change, our natural environment faces the most serious threat in its history. The Wilderness Society hopes that the images and stories in this book will inspire its readers to help tackle this most important of all challenges faced by Australia today.