John Wamsley

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John Wamsley (born 1938) is an Australian environmentalist. He was the Prime Minister's Environmentalist of the Year for 2003. Wamsley is known for his attempt to set up a network of wildlife sanctuaries across Australia. [1]

Wamsley was born in Ourimbah, New South Wales in 1938. His passion for Australian wildlife was born when the seven-year-old Wamsley's family moved to a 67 hectare bushland block at Niagara Park. At age sixteen Wamsley became a trainee metallurgist with BHP. Dissatisfied with the job he became a labourer at BHP's Newcastle Steelworks and worked a second job renovating run down houses. By age 23 Wamsley was a millionaire. Approximately two years later Wamsley enrolled at the University of Newcastle. The thirty-year-old Wamsley graduated with a PhD in Mathematics and moved to Flinders University to lecture. [2] His doctoral thesis from the University of Queensland, at only 70 pages, is among the shortest theses in the library. [3]

June 1969 saw the purchase of a dairy farm at Mylor, South Australia, that was to become Wamsley's first sanctuary, Warrawong. Wamsley eradicated all feral plants and animals from the sanctuary and erected a surrounding fence to preserve the sanctuary's feral free state. [2] Wamsley entered the public eye when he attended a tourism awards ceremony wearing a hat made from the pelt of a dead feral cat. The ensuing controversy led to a change in the law, allowing feral cats to be legally killed. [4]

With the view to duplicating the success of the Warrawong wildlife sanctuary in South Australia, Earth Sanctuaries Limited (ESL) was floated on the Australian Securities Exchange in 2000. [5] At its peak, ESL had 11 prospective sanctuaries in three states accounting for 100,000 hectares. [5] ESL was successful in some rewilding and ecosystem restoration projects. [5] By pioneering feral-proof fencing, native Australian animals were successfully re-introduced where they were locally extinct. [5] However, the company was not financially successful. ESL was wound up and delisted in 2005. [5] [6] The sanctuaries were sold, and some remain in operation, including Mount Rothwell Biodiversity Interpretation Centre [7] and several managed by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy. [8] ESL was the world's first publicly listed company whose business was conservation. [5] [9]

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References

  1. ↑ "John Wamsley - Prime Minister's Environmentalist of the Year 2003". Minister for the Environment and Heritage Media Releases. Department of the Environment & Water Resources. 14 July 2004. Archived from the original on 29 September 2007. Retrieved 29 August 2007.
  2. 1 2 Radford, Leigh. "John Wamsley". ABC Rural . Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 8 October 2015.
  3. ↑ "The Deficiency of Finite Groups".
  4. ↑ Adams, Prue (27 March 2005). "Wamsley walks away from Earth Sanctuaries". Landline . Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 28 December 2018.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Paull, John (2021) "Ecosystem Restoration: The Bold Experiment for Rewilding Australia", International Sustainable Development Research Society (ISDRS) Newsletter, Q4(1):5.1-5.4.
  6. ↑ Emmett, Patrick (25 March 2005). "Cat hat man runs out of lives?". Stateline . Archived from the original on 3 March 2016.
  7. ↑ Kizilos, Katherine (28 February 2007). "The ark at Little River". The Age . Retrieved 26 June 2024.
  8. ↑ "A Win for Australian Conservation: Australian Wildlife Conservancy to Acquire Sanctuaries from Earth Sanctuaries Ltd". Australian Wildlife Conservancy . 2002. Archived from the original on 24 August 2014. Retrieved 26 June 2024.
  9. ↑ Wamsley, John; Davey, Stephen L. (29 October 2020). A Vanishing Kind: A Memoir of Dr John Wamsley in Conversations. Balboa Press. ISBN   978-1-5043-2295-9.
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