Matt Hewson
Geelong wetlands conservationist Tony Leen, 75, has toiled for years to protect and revitalise wetlands in the Greater Geelong area.
For his service to conservation and the environment Mr Leen was presented with a medal of the Order of Australia, an honour that he said was due to the efforts of many others.
“I’ve put a lot of work into that area and it’s nice to have that work recognised,” Mr Leen said.
“But there’s some wonderful people that helped me along the way and are continuing to do that.
“All these things are done with a combination of people, not just a single person. I’m very pleased to have been involved with it in the past, and also into the future.”
A keen hunter and conservation officer for the Geelong branch of Field and Game Australia, Mr Leen remembers as a young man watching the local wetlands deteriorating before his eyes.
“50 years ago a lot of the farm lands were being drained, farmers were into every blade of grass to create prime grazing land,” he said.
“Others were being filled with rubbish; any low area was given no value and either drained for farmland or used for landfill.”
Mr Leen decided in the late 1980s to buy a large swathe of land at Lake Connewarre, land that was undervalued given the amount of improvement required to make it workable farmland.
Now a Ramsar-listed wetland, the Connewarre wetlands are now one of Victoria’s most pristine waterbird habitats.
“It’s quite spectacular, what we’ve maintained there; just beautiful,” Mr Leen said.
“We’ve got a wetland education centre, so school kids can learn about all the species in the water. It’s been very, very successful.”
