Tony Parkes left a successful career in investment banking and devoted three decades to restoring the Big Scrub, the once-vast subtropical rainforest of northern New South Wales.After moving to the Northern Rivers, he and his wife Rowena planted tens of thousands of trees on their own land, turning private restoration into a public cause.As co-founder and longtime president of Big Scrub Rainforest Conservancy, he helped unite landholders, scientists, bush regenerators, donors and volunteers around a disciplined model of rainforest recovery.His work helped protect remnants, plant millions of trees, strengthen restoration science and make the recovery of the Big Scrub part of the region’s civic life.
On the far north coast of New South Wales, the old rainforest had mostly disappeared. The Big Scrub once covered about 75,000 hectares of rich basalt country, a lowland subtropical forest of figs, vines, palms and fruit doves. By the time modern conservationists took stock of it, little more than one percent remained, divided among small patches on farms, roadsides and reserves. Weeds pressed in from the edges. Cattle and clearing had done the rest. What remained needed legal protection, science, money, landholders, seedlings and years of follow-through.
