(Geoff Tracey in rainforest plantings on James Cook University campus, Cairns, 1999) |
John Geoffrey Tracey (1930-2004)
Geoff Tracey was born in Cairns, Queensland in 1930. He studied agriculture at Gatton Agricultural College (1947-1948) and furthered his studies in Science (Botany) at the University of Queensland in the early 1960s.
Geoff worked for many years (1949-1980) as Professor Len Webb's assistant in the CSIRO Rainforest Ecology Section, initially as a field collector for the Australian Phytochemical Survey. After Len Webb's retirement in 1980, Geoff transferred to CSIRO Atherton and continued to work on the ecology of North Queensland's rainforests until his retirement from CSIRO in 1991. He was seconded to the federal Department of the Environment to help in drawing the boundaries for the World Heritage Listing of the North Queensland Wet Tropics rainforests and act as scientific adviser to its rainforest unit in Cairns.
In 1989 Geoff was instrumental in setting up the shire-based environmental rehabilitation tree planting scheme to employ and re-train timber workers who lost their jobs following World Heritage Listing of North Queensland rainforests in 1988. He was the scientific coordinator of this scheme known as the Wet Tropics Tree Planting Scheme and was adviser to the N.Q. Joint Board (now N.Q. Afforestation) comprising shire chairmen from the twelve local government authorities covering N.Q. Wet Tropics Region, who took over the Scheme in the mid 1990s. Geoff retains a personal interest in and still provides advice to the Scheme.
Geoff has been actively lobbying and working on a project "The Australian National Tropical Botanical Gardens at Mareeba Far North Queensland" since 1987.
An interview with Geoff, explaining some of his deeply held beliefs, appears as: "The Field Botanist: John Geoffrey Tracey" in: Borschmann, Gregg (ed.)(1999) The People's Forest: A Living History of the Australian Bush. Blackheath, N.S.W.: People's Forest Press, pp.218-221.
See also pp.81-88 in Visions of a Rainforest by Stan Breeden and Bill Cooper (1992), published Simon and Schuster Australia, for their perspective on Geoff Tracey and Len Webb and their work on Australia's rainforests.
Geoff passed away at his home in Yungaburra on July 30, 2004. An obituary notice appeared in the Cairns Post newspaper of the 9th August 2004 , Ed: 1, p. 014. A brief obituary notice also appeared in the Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research's CBPR News, Issue 62: July 2004.
Bibliography of Scientific Publications by Geoff Tracey (HTML)
; (PDF)