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Parkes also co-founded Rainforest Rescue in 1999, serving as chairman for eight years, and led the Big Scrub Rainforest Foundation as chairperson for 30 years until the final weeks\u00a0of his life.<\/p>\n
Big Scrub Rainforest Foundation director Shannon Greenfields said Parkes was captivated by the beauty, fragility, history and extraordinary diversity of the Big Scrub, once Australia’s largest expanse of subtropical lowland rainforest. Covering about 75,000 hectares between Byron Bay, Lismore and Ballina, much of the rainforest was cleared during the 19th century for Australian Red Cedar logging and conversion to dairy and\u00a0agricultural land.<\/p>\n
“The rainforest seemed to speak to something at his very core,” Greenfields said.<\/p>\n
She recalled Parkes’s fascination with the rainforest’s ancient origins, saying he liked to imagine dinosaurs walking up to trees and rubbing their bodies against the bark.<\/p>\n
“He loved the rainforest because it embodied hope \u2013 he saw not only what was lost but what could be restored,” she said.<\/p>\n
Parkes’s contribution to conservation was recognised with the NSW Landcarer of the Year award in 2001 and 2015, the National Banksia Award for Community Environmental Leadership in 2016, and appointment as an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2019 for distinguished service to conservation and the environment through the restoration of critically endangered subtropical rainforests in northern NSW.<\/p>\n
Greenfields said Parkes’s legacy was the people and landscapes he inspired.<\/p>\n
“May his spirit live on in every leaf, seedling, bird call and future generation that walks in the rainforest canopy that he helped bring back from the brink,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CONSERVATIONIST Tony Parkes was remembered as an inspirational man who left the world a better place than he found it during a celebration of his life at Bangalow A&I Hall on Friday. ABC broadcaster Mick O’Regan emceed the service, welcoming Parkes’s family and friends with the words “Good afternoon treehuggers”. The stage was decorated with […]<\/p>\n