Tony Parkes – Co-founder and President of Big Scrub Rainforest Conservancy

After spending the first 23 years of his life in Hobart Tony Parkes graduated university with a PhD in Organic Chemistry. This was followed by two years in London and six years in Montreal. Tony then moved to Sydney for a career in investment banking. In 1991 he and his wife bought an old dairy property in the Northern Rivers on land that was once teeming with life as part of the Big Scrub – a vast swathe of lowland subtropical rainforest that stretched from Gympie to Grafton.

In 1993 Tony co-founded Big Scrub Landcare after falling in love with the rainforest and continues to be its President almost thirty years on.

We just so happened to call him on World Rainforest Day – a happy coincidence. Tony’s love for the rainforest is infectious and our chat ranged from the sensible decisions of NSW Premier Neville Wran to Wompoo Fruit Doves.

He also gave us some background on Big Scrub Landcare’s world-leading Science Saving Rainforests Program which RTNR’s first donation was directed towards. You can read all about it below.

You grew up in Hobart. What similarities do you see between the Northern Rivers and Tasmania, if any?

I suppose there’s a fair environmental awareness in both places. We had our battles a little bit earlier than Tasmania. I think we were quite fortunate in the Northern Rivers that after the Terania Creek protests in 1976 Neville Wran got the message and stopped rainforest logging. We were lucky enough to have a receptive Premier at the time. I can’t imagine, since then, that would have been possible. The one thing Neville did was to stop the logging. Tasmania’s still got a long way to go to protecting Old Growth.

In saying that, while the rainforest here is protected our sclerophyll forests (where Eucalypts are the dominant species) are still logged. That’s still an issue but at least the rainforest is protected.

What’s your favourite species – plant or animal – in the Big Scrub? Why?

I guess it would have to be the Wompoo Fruit Dove. It’s beautiful and it’s also the largest transporter of fruit across the landscape that we’ve got left. When you get Wompoos in restored areas or remnants you know that you’re doing pretty well and you’re well on the path to restoration.

I guess the reason why it’s my favourite, and why it has always been Big Scrub Landcare’s logo,  is that it’s a sign of success in the recovery of the rainforest.

It’s our logo too! And we actually chose it for very similar reasons. Moving on from the Wompoo, what do you love most about being in the rainforest?

I’m always gobsmacked by its beauty and its incredible biodiversity. They’re the two reasons why I first fell in love with the rainforest thirty-something years ago. And its been a long time love affair.

You have a plot of restored rainforest on your property too, right?

Yes we’ve restored rainforest on a third of our 105 acres. We started in 1991 and then ’92 at the back of our house and we were still planting up until about three years ago. We’ve restored vegetation on about 2.5km of our side of Skinners Creek and looked after three small remnant stands of rainforest on the property that are all now doing really well.

It’s wonderful because you take people in there and they just can’t believe they’re standing in a rainforest that’s been restored. It’s quite dramatic.

Why is the Big Scrub so unique?

It’s descended from the Gondwanan rainforest which covered most of  Australia when it split off from Gondwana 40 million years ago and it has the lineages of many ancient species, both pines and flowering plants. I mean look at Hoop Pine – and very few people realise but it can trace its lineage back 180 million years. That was around when the dinosaurs were here!

So there’s a high proportion of Gondwanan species in the Big Scrub. If you look at Far North QLD, there’s a significant portion of Gondwanan species plus many Asian immigrants; there are much fewer immigrant species down here. Lowland subtropical rainforest had contracted to about 200,000 hectares when Europeans arrive in Australia.

The Big Scrub has the maximum biodiversity of any terrestrial ecosystem in NSW and is ranked third in Australia. So there’s a whole bunch of reasons why it’s worthwhile protecting because it’s rich and unique in the world.

Why is the Big Scrub under threat?

At this point the biggest immediate threat is weeds. When the group of us got together in 1993 to start Big Scrub Landcare we were concerned that many of the remaining remnants were being overrun by weeds, others were degrading rapidly and basically no one was doing anything about it. Lismore City Council was doing a little but not much.

So we thought  if the governments won’t do anything the community better get itself into gear. So that’s what we did and we’ve been a roaring success in the thirty years since in saving the Big Scrub.

Over 2.5 million trees have been planted in the region which makes up around 600ha of restored rainforest. That’s pretty incredible considering that once Europeans had cleared the Big Scrub there was only around 800ha left. Basically we’ve increased the area of the Big Scrub by 75% in 30 years which is a fantastic restoration achievement undertaken almost entirely by community efforts.

Woah that’s pretty incredible! Another massive long term threat is one you’ve touched on in relation to genetic diversity. We recently donated to Big Scrub Landcare’s Science Saving Rainforests program recently. Why is this program so important?

 The trouble we have now is that the planting stock we use doesn’t have enough genetic diversity. Despite everyone’s best efforts seed collectors would often return to roadside trees that they could access easily rather than collect seed in remnants or in National Parks and reserves. We’ve been aware of this but had no means of doing anything about it until about two or three years ago.

 We thought, well if we can’t get the seed collectors to collect more broadly we’ll have to get together and pay them more so they can collect seed from a wider radius – from Grafton up to Gympie, which is the northern extremity of lowland subtropical rainforest.

 Then I got chatting to Maurizio Rossetto, one of Australia’s leading plant geneticists, at the Sydney Botanic Gardens. He was keen to partner with us and base the project on best practice science by looking at the genetic diversity of key species. DNA sequencing has now come down in price to the extent that it is now possible for us to afford.

We are now collecting leaf samples from up to 200 individuals across the range of 53 Big Scrub species – 23 structural and 30 threatened species and DNA sequencing is done on each of those samples. Maurizio and his team at the Botanic Gardens then use a marvellous software that looks at the variations in genetic diversity across the range of each species and correlates that to temperature and other ecological variables. Then they feed in a climate model to handpick 20 or so individuals from each species that have optimal genetic diversity and are most likely to survive.

Geez that’s amazing. So their software can read all that?

Yep. It is amazing. I mean there’s more genes in plants than there are in humans which is amazing too.

So that’s what we’re doing with our Science Saving Rainforests program. The thing that has slowed us down massively has been COVID – because the leaf sample collection is a massive task and we haven’t had access to lots of sites in QLD.

 We’re hoping to get it finished in about a year. All the leaves we’ve collected up to date are frozen and when it comes time to do the DNA sequencing, the DNA is extracted from those leaves and sent down to Canberra where they’ve got all the latest technology The results of sequencing those samples are then sent to Maurizio at the Botanic Gardens and he plugs it into his software and away we go!

And obviously that will influence the way plants are propagated in the future?

Yep. What we’re doing is building a plantation that will house up to 20 individuals of each of the 53 species. Once trees begin to produce seed it will be supplied to nurseries to propagate into planting stock for restoration plantings. That will take around 6 to 7 years so in the meantime we’re hoping to get financial grants to pay seed collectors to head out to collect seed from the parents of plantation trees.

I just have one more question and I’m pretty curious to see what you’ve got to say. Are you hopeful for the future?

Yes! I’m really optimistic. We have the means now to save our rainforests from the short term threats and the long-term threats and what’s more – this approach we have to solving the genetic diversity problem is applicable anywhere in  the world. It’s a world leading approach. It’s great for both ecosystems and for recovering threatened species.