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OUR PEOPLE

Individuals achieving results for nature

The Australian Foundation for Wilderness' board and staff are driven to ensure we can achieve the outcomes nature urgently needs. Through our strategic campaigns and the unwavering support of our members, we tackle the biggest threats to Australia's precious wilderness and the areas that connect them.

GOVERNANCE

Our Board of Directors

Every year, our members have the opportunity to elect directors of the Australian Foundation for Wilderness Limited at our Annual General Meeting.

Bob Debus AM - Chair

Bob was Member for Blue Mountains in the NSW Parliament from 1981 to 1988 and from 1995 to 2007. He was NSW Attorney General and the State’s longest serving Environment Minister, as well as the Minister for Home Affairs in the Australian Government between 2007 and 2010. He is now also the Chair of Great Eastern Ranges Ltd, a conservation initiative working to restore land at a landscape scale across Eastern Australia. He sits on the boards of Water NSW and several justice reform organisations.

Virginia Young - Director

A former Treasury official, Virginia has been prominent in successful environmental campaigns across Australia since the 1980s. She continues to pioneer environmental campaign work across Australia and internationally. Chair also of Gondwanalink, a project to restore and reconnect land across South Western Australia, she was recognised as one of 20 ”Global Wilderness Visionaries'' by the World Wilderness Congress in 2010. In 2007 she established the Ecosystems Climate Alliance, an international association of environmental NGOs that feeds good science, policy and nature advocacy into the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Christine Milne AO - Director

Christine is an environmental activist prominent in the fight to save the Franklin River and leader of the campaign against the Wesley Vale pulp mill in northern Tasmania. She was elected to the Tasmanian Parliament in 1989 and went on to spend the next 25 years leading in Green politics in Tasmania and nationally, campaigning for native forest protection and action to address the global warming and biodiversity crises. She was vice chair of the Council of International Union for the Conservation of Nature in 2004 and continues to work with environmental NGOs around the world.

Ted Plummer - Deputy Chair

A lifelong conservationist and bushwalker, Ted was a senior environment policy adviser in the NSW Government from 1999 to 2007. This period was a high water mark for conservation policy, the expansion of the protected area system and adoption of numerous far-reaching and lasting environmental reforms. He has served in Local Government.

Rod Madgwick - Director

Rod was a prominent barrister in Sydney, and for more than 30 years a judge of the NSW District, ACT Supreme and Federal Courts. He is a former President of the Australian Society of Labour Lawyers. He is a social justice and civil liberties activist, and has represented the International Commission of Jurists and similar organisations in Israel, Turkey and Vietnam.

Dr David Hunter - Director

David is an entomologist and an international expert on plague locusts. He is a former President of the Orthopterists’ Society, a worldwide organisation of more than 400 scientists and managers who specialise in the study of locusts, grasshoppers and other Orthoptera. He is a consultant to the Asian Development Bank on climate adaptive pest management, and the author of more than 60 scientific publications.

Tom Kelly - Director

Tom is a highly experienced lawyer, with particular expertise in the conduct of public interest litigation. He was a partner in a Sydney firm of solicitors and subsequently the head of NSW Legal Aid. His memberships of numerous Commonwealth and NSW statutory boards and tribunals have given him an intimate knowledge of government functions and processes.

Dr Anne Kerle - Director

Anne is an ecologist, focussed on vertebrate ecology, conservation of species and communities, and land management. She has worked across Australia, often with Aboriginal communities. An author of over 50 scientific publications she has been a member of a wide variety of advisory boards and scientific committees. Notably, she was a member of  the NSW Threatened Species Scientific Committee (2016-2022), which she chaired for three years.

OUR TEAM

Staff

Our dedicated team of staff run the day-to-day operations and campaigns at Wilderness Australia.

 

Andrew Wong - Operations Manager

Andrew has worked as a forest ecologist and environmental campaigner in Australia for over 33 years. He achieved particular prominence in the successful campaigns for forest national parks in southern New South Wales. In recognition of his commitment to strategic thinking he has been asked to train campaigners in eight different countries. He was the Chair of the health promotion charity ‘Life. Be in it.’ Australia 2019-2022.

Ella Magee-Carr - Project Manager

Ella is a recent graduate of Macquarie University, where she obtained her Bachelor’s Degree in Biodiversity & Conservation. As part of the university's Professional and Community Engagement program, Ella has worked with the National Indigenous Science Experience Program (NISEP), aiming to expand and motivate First Nations leadership in STEM, and volunteered with the Junior Science Academy (JSA) helping to promote the engagement of primary school students in science.      

Herbert Moll - Finance Manager

Herbert is a Chartered Accountant with over 40 years’ experience both in Australia and overseas ranging from Audit, Financial Management and Business Management. Herbert was an audit partner/director with RSM Bird Cameron (Sydney) and KPMG Tasmania (Hobart) for 20 years and has extensive financial management experience in not-for-profits, including The Wilderness Society, the Archdiocese of Hobart, and CatholicCare Tasmania.

Alec Marr - Strategic Advisor

With almost 40 years experience as an environmental campaigner, Alec transformed The Wilderness Society (a peer organisation to Wilderness Australia) into Australia’s largest nature protection organisation. Under his leadership (1997 to 2010), TWS achieved a seven-fold increase in membership, a fifteen-fold increase in financial turnover, and the protection of 27 million hectares of natural areas. Alec drove the forest protection campaign that resulted in the collapse of Australia’s largest logging company, Gunns Ltd in Tasmania, and played key roles in the campaigns to stop the Jabiluka uranium mine in Kakadu National Park and to expand Aboriginal-managed National Parks in Cape York Peninsula.

JOIN THE TEAM

Current opportunities to work at Wilderness Australia

There are no job opportunities at Wilderness Australia currently open. However, please feel free get in touch at [email protected] if you're keen to work or volunteer with us into the future. 

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Australian Foundation for Wilderness Limited
ACN 001 112 143
ABN 84 001 112 143
Advocating as 'Wilderness Australia'
Formerly The Colong Foundation for Wilderness Ltd
Registered Office 8/154 Elizabeth Street Sydney NSW 2000
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