Tom Crook — A Conservation Manager Driving Change
A ‘Swimming Upstream’ interview supported through my Artist Residency on FLOAT
For a summer’s day it is quite windy and the clouds on the horizon hint that a storm is not far away.
Tom Crook, a passionate ecologist in the East Gippsland area, has invited us to take a walk with him as he checks on the health of a recovering stand of critically endangered Littoral Rainforest behind the Lake Tyers Beach campsite. Tom works for East Gippsland Conservation Management Networks (EGCMN), a land-based conservation network for threatened ecological communities as well as remnant vegetation. It is thanks to the dedicated work of people like Tom that these endangered forests are recovering. As Tom explains, their work is ‘tenure blind’, based on a cooperative, partnership-based approach to change. It is supported by many landowners and land managers as well as by those who engage in supportive programs like Landcare and Citizen Science.
As we walk, I try to imagine what Gondwana Australia might have looked like in these parts 200–45 million years ago, completely covered in forests like this.
