Leonard Webb (academic)

Leonard James ( Len ) Webb AO (28 October 1920 – 25 November 2008) was a widely awarded Australian ecologist and ethnobotanist who was the author or joint-author of over 112 scientific papers throughout the course of his professional career.[1][2] Employed as a researcher by the CSIRO from the early 1950s until his retirement in 1980, Webb initially worked as a contributor to the Australian Phytochemical Survey. In the mid 1950s Webb established the CSIRO Rainforest Ecology Unit at Long Pocket Laboratories (Brisbane), commencing a long research partnership with Rainforest ecologist Geoff Tracey AM which, several years later, led to the publication of the first systematic classification of Australian rainforest vegetation in the Journal of Ecology in 1959.[3]

In November 1965 Webb, accompanied by Geoff Tracey, conducted a vegetation survey in the Wet Tropics which resulted in Webb putting forward a series of national park proposals in 1966 for the purpose of protecting the full range of the remaining habitats of the Wet Tropics. Entitled "The Identification and Conservation of Habitat Types in the Wet Tropical Lowlands of North Queensland",[4] Webb's report was the first report of its kind and contained the first reference in scientific literature to the international significance of the lowland rainforests of the Wet Tropics. The proposals in Webb's report were specifically confined to the lowlands because of the extreme development pressures which had been placed on the lowlands from around the mid-1950s onwards. [5]

In 1975, a year after Peter Stanton PSM, of the Queensland National Parks Dept. published an extensive field review of the conservation status of the wet tropics confirming that "the areas Webb and Tracey had identified were still some of the highest priorities for conservation",[6][7][8]Webb and Tracey published a collection of 15 vegetation maps entitled "Vegetation of the Humid Tropical Region of North Queensland"[9] which were used extensively in support of a number of major conservation campaigns across Queensland. These events ultimately culminated in many of the areas within Webb's 1966 report, including the Cape Tribulation and Daintree regions, being gazetted as National Parks in 1981.

In the early '80s after decades of ongoing research, Webb and Tracey had accumulated a large corpus of scientific evidence which confirmed that Australian tropical rainforests had evolved from Gondwana over 100 million years ago and were not, as previously believed, relatively recent arrivals from South East Asia.[10] This new understanding of the origins of Australian rainforests in addition to the publication of Geoff Tracey's 1982 paper "The Vegetation of the Humid Tropical Region of North Queensland" [11] significantly contributed to the scientific basis for the subsequent successful World Heritage nomination of the Wet Tropics of Queensland in 1988.[12][13]

Webb was awarded Officer of the Order of Australia in the 1987 Queen's Birthday Honours Ceremony "For service to conservation, particularly in the field of rainforest ecology"[14] He was also later awarded the Civilian Service Medal 1939–1945 in 1995[15] and the Australian Centenary Medal in 2001 for "For service to conservation and the environment in Queensland".[16]

Selected works
  • Webb, L. J. (Leonard James); Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (Australia) (1948), Guide to the medicinal and poisonous plants of Queensland, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research
  • Webb, L. J. (Leonard James) (1968), Nature protection in Europe, Wildlife Preservation Society of Australia, ISBN 978-0-909971-01-4
  • Webb, L. J. (Leonard James); Whitelock, Derek, 1934-2015; Webb, L. J. (Leonard James), 1920-2008; Brereton, J. Le Gay (John Le Gay), 1871-1933 (1969), The last of lands, Jacaranda Press, ISBN 978-0-7016-0005-1CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Webb, L. J. (Leonard James) (1973), Environmental boomerang, Jacaranda Press, ISBN 978-0-7016-0587-2
  • Webb, L. J. (Leonard James) (1975), Man and environment : conservation of natural resources, Gage Educational Pub. ; Ryde [Australia] : Jacaranda Press, ISBN 978-0-7715-7219-7
  • Webb, L. J. (Leonard James); Kikkawa, Jiro, 1929-; Webb, L. J. (Leonard James), 1920-2008; CSIRO; ANZAAS. Congress James Cook University of North Queensland) (57th : 1987; ANZAAS. (57th : 1987 : James Cook University of North Queensland); Webb, L; Kikkawa, J (1990), Australian tropical rainforests : science - values -meaning, CSIRO Australia, ISBN 978-0-643-05055-6CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

References
  1. "Webb, Leonard James (1920 - 2008)". Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria, Australian National Herbarium. 27 January 2016 – via Australian National Botanic Gardens.
  2. Encyclopedia of Australian Science
  3. Webb, Len (1 October 1959). "A Physiognomic Classification of Australian Rain Forests". Journal of Ecology. British Ecological Society : Journal of Ecology Vol. 47, No. 3, pp. 551-570. 47 (3): 551–570. doi:10.2307/2257290. JSTOR 2257290.
  4. Webb, Leonard (1966). "The Identification and Conservation of Habitat Types in the Wet Tropical Lowlands of North Queensland". Proceedings of Royal Society of Queensland. 78: 59–86.
  5. "State of the Wet Tropics Report 2017-18" (PDF). The Wet Tropics Management Authority. 1 December 2018. p. 46 – via Federal Dept. Environment.
  6. "State of the Wet Tropics Report 2017-18" (PDF). The Wet Tropics Management Authority. 1 December 2018. p. 46 – via Federal Dept. Environment.
  7. Stanton, J.P. (27 April 1974). "A report on the Daintree River - Cooktown region". Queensland Department of Forestry – via Trove.
  8. Stanton, J.P. (27 April 1974). "A proposed system of national parks for Queensland coastal areas (Bundaberg to the Daintree River)". Queensland Department of Forestry – via Trove.
  9. Tracey, J.G.; Webb, L.J. (27 April 1975). "Vegetation of the humid tropical region of North Queensland" – via National Library of Australia.
  10. Sanderson, Rachel (1 May 2008). "Re-writing the History of Australian Tropical Rainforests: 'Alien Invasives' or 'Ancient Indigenes'?". Environment and History. 14 (2): 165–185. doi:10.3197/096734008X303719. JSTOR 20723663.
  11. Tracey, J.G. (27 April 1982). "The vegetation of the humid tropical region of North Queensland" – via National Library of Australia.
  12. Hutton, Drew; Connors, Libby (1999). History of the Australian Environmental Movement. Cambridge University Press. p. 171. ISBN 978-0521456869.
  13. Borschmann, Gregg (1999). The People's Forest - The Field Botanist (John Geoffrey Tracey). The People's Forest Press. p. 218–221. ISBN 0-646-36939-3.
  14. "Dr Leonard James Webb". Australian Honours Search Facility: Dept of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Retrieved 10 June 2020.
  15. "Mr Leonard James Webb". Australian Honours Search Facility: Dept of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Retrieved 10 June 2020.
  16. "Dr Leonard WEBB". Australian Honours Search Facility: Dept of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Retrieved 10 June 2020.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.