Rainforest Conservation from the Ground Up: Leonard Webb and the Globalisation of Ecological Heritage

This paper examines how rainforest conservation in eastern Australia was globalised from the ground up. It follows the intertwined work of ecologist Leonard Webb and poet‑activist Judith Wright, alongside the diverse communities of northern New South Wales who reshaped environmental politics in the late 20th century. During the 1970s, subtropical and temperate rainforests became multifocal political battlegrounds, as Webb’s ecological surveys combined with Wright’s advocacy. At the same time, Aquarius festival participants, Terania Creek protestors, and local New Age and conservation groups generated forms of on‑the‑ground activism that challenged logging and insisted on renewed relationships to Country. // Their grounded interventions unsettled older wilderness narratives and infused emerging ecological governance with alternative ways of imagining human–forest connections, even as World Heritage frameworks continued to separate nature from culture. By tracing this collaboration among scientists, writers, and local movements, the paper shows how ecological heritage scaled into a global register through both geological time and the contested practices of rainforest protection.

Image credit: The ecologist Leonard Webb in Nimbin with the Aquarians in 1973. Photography by Harry Watson Smith, 1973. CC BY-SA