Responding to place in a post-colonial era: An Australian perspective: John Cameron

My thinking about conservation strategies has been heavily influenced by an experience of four years’ full-time consulting with a leading Australian environmental conservation organization. As a result of producing several reports on a conservation-oriented forest policy (eg Cameron and Penna, 1988) and ecologically sustainable land management (Cameron and Elix, 1991), I became involved in vigorous environmental debates at conferences, in the media, in Parliament House and at local forest protests. I grew concerned about the depth of polarization between the protagonists, and the vested interest of the media and lobby groups themselves in highlighting conflict, apparently for its own sake.