Bessie Rischbieth Conservation Award Recipient 2000

Rod Whittle

Rod Whittle has been involved in long and effective activism in the Margaret River area.

Rod’s achievements include:
 Helping to establish community housing,
 Persuading the local council to introduce recycling,
 Playing a major role in the campaign to retain bush land in the town centre threatened by Coles carpark and to have Kilcarnup vested as a National Park and its vegetation restored,
 Protecting and revegetating the dunes at Boodjidup, and
 Having Margaret River’s surrounding forest of Bramley and nearby Forest Grove approved as conservation reserves.

As a key campaigner for forests, he:
 Helped end clearing of the Donnybrook Sunklands for pine plantation,
 Participated in forest rescues, notably Hilliger,
 Helped in the survey of log stockpiles, and
 Wrote a comprehensive report on old growth forest in the Sunklands area.

Rod has long been an active member of Leeuwin Conservation Group (LCG), representing it on the Margaret River catchment and landcare groups and in opposing and monitoring BHP’s now-defunct Beenup mineral sands mine over acid sulphate soils.  He was instrumental in the LCG’s taking court action over the ill-conceived Gnarabup coastal development and continues to expose the WA Planning Commission’s pro-developer decisions on coastal and urban development.