{"id":30690,"date":"2026-06-13T20:13:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T20:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/30690\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T20:13:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T20:13:12","slug":"rainforest-conservationist-tony-parkes-dies-aged-96-after-a-career-of-world-leading-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/30690\/","title":{"rendered":"Rainforest conservationist Tony Parkes dies aged 96 after a career of ‘world-leading science’"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of Australia’s leading figures in rainforest conservation, Dr Tony Parkes AO, has died aged 96, leaving a legacy of groundbreaking science and millions of replanted trees.<\/p>\n

A merchant banker turned conservationist, Parkes had said his conservation work got him out of bed every morning.<\/p>\n

“I’m one of those fortunate groups of people who are now termed biophiles,” he told the ABC in 2024.<\/p>\n

“We have a strong connection with and love of the natural environment, and that’s really been a guiding principle of my whole life.”<\/p>\n

Parkes grew up in Hobart, where his earliest memories are of playing in boats and in the nearby bushland.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

Parkes said planting 40,000 rainforest trees on his property had been the joy of his life. (ABC News: Emma Rennie)<\/p>\n

After gaining a PhD in chemistry and postgraduate qualifications in business, much of his career was spent in what was, at the time, a relatively new field: investment banking.<\/p>\n

His roles ranged from being the general manager of a fertiliser company to being the chairman of a merchant bank.<\/p>\n

“I always had a plan to quit in my mid-50s to spend more time with my gorgeous wife and to get out of the corporate field. I’d had enough of that,” he said.<\/p>\n

He and his wife, Rowena, chose to build a home in the NSW Northern Rivers, and during this time, Parkes learned about the Big Scrub rainforest, which traced its origins back millions of years to the Gondwana supercontinent.<\/p>\n

\"Condong_Creek_Big_Scrub_Rainforest\"<\/p>\n

The Big Scrub is descended from the\u00a0Gondwana rainforest that covered Australia 40 million years ago. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

By the time he moved to the Northern Rivers in about 1990, the Big Scrub was reduced to about 80 remnants scattered across the region after decades of land clearing.<\/p>\n

“I can remember going in there and being absolutely stunned by the diversity of life forms,” Parkes recalled of his first trip into a pocket of Big Scrub.<\/p>\n

“There are trees and fungi and ferns, and a whole diversity of each of those life forms.<\/p>\n

“The extent of the biodiversity is mind blowing and beautiful beyond description.<\/p>\n

“I fell in love with the rainforest on that first visit, and I’m still madly in love with it 35 years later.”<\/p>\n

A chance encounter with rainforest ecologist and nursery owner Mark Dunphy sparked a new venture that would push rainforest conservation forward in leaps and bounds in the form of the Big Scrub Landcare. This was later rebranded as the Big Scrub Rainforest Conservancy.<\/p>\n

The group spearheaded a campaign to protect the remaining rainforest remnants and promote regeneration.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Mark Dunphy co-founded the Big Scrub Landcare group with Tony Parkes in 1993. (ABC News: Emma Rennie)<\/p>\n

“I thought, ‘Well, how’s this merchant banker who doesn’t have my politics going to work in this conservation restoration industry?,” \u00a0Mr Dunphy had said in the years prior to Parkes’s death.<\/p>\n

“But he brought all these fantastic skills to the table. His ability to manage money, and raise money, and manage projects has been just exemplary.<\/p>\n

“He’s been an absolutely amazing leader. He’s been like a father figure to me in many ways.”\"A<\/p>\n

United by their shared loved of the rainforest, Mark said Tony had been like a father to him. (ABC News: Emma Rennie)<\/p>\n

World-leading work an ongoing legacy<\/p>\n

The conservancy grew to oversee about 200,000 trees planted annually in restoration projects.<\/p>\n

But Parkes and his colleagues were determined to do even more.<\/p>\n

“The problem we’ve had from the outset with the remnants is, because they’re isolated and scattered, there’s not much flow of pollen or seed between them,” he said.<\/p>\n

The conservancy began working with scientists to analyse the genome<\/a> of rainforest species.<\/p>\n

The ongoing project uses that data to identify and propagate the strongest examples of each species to ensure the best genetics are used in future planting.<\/p>\n

“This is world-leading application of genome science to restoring critically endangered ecosystems,” Parkes had said.<\/p>\n

\"Five<\/p>\n

Mark Dunphy, Tony Parkes and members of the Science Saving Rainforests team in 2024 at a macadamia plantation that was going to be turned into rainforest conservation. (ABC North Coast: Hannah Ross)<\/p>\n

In 2019, Parkes was named an Officer of the Order of Australia for his conservation efforts, which had also included planting 40,000 trees on his own property.<\/p>\n

He said he had been blessed over the 35-year journey.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I love planting trees, it\u2019s the joy of my life,” he said.<\/p>\n

And he was never interested in retirement.<\/p>\n

“I wouldn’t ever retire. This is too important. It gets me up every morning,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I love this project, I love the people I work with. I love the rainforest. And what better way could there be to spend your time than helping to save it?”<\/p>\n

Parkes is survived by his brother Anton, his children Abby, Trina and Richard, Richard’s wife Yiska, grandchildren, and a great-grandchild.<\/p>\n

Richard said his father had shown incredible will and passion for his work that he hoped would inspire others.<\/p>\n

“Tony was always driven by an undying curiosity and a desire for understanding and truth, and this drove his zest for life right up until his dying breath,” he said.<\/p>\n

The Big Scrub Foundation said: “Tony leaves an extraordinary legacy that will continue to shape rainforest conservation and restoration for generations to come.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of Australia’s leading figures in rainforest conservation, Dr Tony Parkes AO, has died aged 96, leaving a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[22,21,28358,4368,2717,28360,28357,28361,2272,28359,28356,28362],"class_list":["post-30690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-big-scrub","tag-conservation","tag-death","tag-landcare","tag-mark-dunphy","tag-northern-nsw","tag-obituary","tag-rainforest","tag-tony-parkes","tag-tony-parkes-dies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}