Queen's honour for leading palaeobotanist
Australia must protect its biodiversity and be a leader in combating climate change, says a recipient of this year's Queen's Birthday Honours.
Palaeobotanist Dr Mary White has been made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for her work in the field of botany.
Speaking from her rainforest retreat in northern New South Wales, White says Australia needs to get its act together and lead the fight against climate change.
"We need to stop the destruction of tropical equatorial forests because they're the big balancing mechanism that keeps climate under control."
She says the earth is suffering from destruction of natural vegetation, which is exacerbating climate change.
White, who has spent much of her life identifying plant fossils, is best known for her series of popular books on the evolution of the Australian continent.
She says she is blown away by the award.
"It was the last thing on earth I'd expected to happen to me."
Born into botany
White says growing up in Zimbabwe, then known as Rhodesia, with two botanists as parents she was destined to become one herself.
She says her interest in palaeobotany, the study of ancient plant remains, came from her supervisor at Cape Town University, the renowned geologist Alex du Toit - a father of the continental drift theory.
"When I was looking for a subject for my thesis he suggested I do something paleobotanical because there wasn't a single palaeobotanist in Africa", she says.
In 1955, White and her family moved to Australia, and she later assisted the then Bureau of Mineral Resources identify plant fossils.
"Each year they would deliver one or two 44-gallon drums to my back door and I produced official reports on them," she says.
White says identifying fossils fuelled her curiosity to understand the evolution of the Australian continent.
"I was getting a picture about what it was to be alive in the geological time," says White.
This understanding lead to her researching and writing books on Australia's environment, including The Greening of Gondwana, Listen...Our land is crying and Running Down: Water in a Changing Land, which continue to be used by schools and universities.
White says it's little wonder Australia suffers water shortages, loss of biodiversity and drought.
"It doesn't make sense to use the agricultural systems based on northern hemisphere environments here in Australia," she says. "We have a completely different geological history."
It's not surprising when you think like a European and propose those sorts of regimes on an ancient, fragile land like Australia that you get issues with sustainability, says White.
"It's like asking an old person to keep up with a young person in a marathon."
But White acknowledges that farming practices in Australia are getting better.
She says the rapid loss of biodiversity in Australia, and around the world, encouraged her to purchase and protect a section of rainforest in northern NSW.
"Knowing what I know about the situation I have an obligation I thought I should go out and buy myself a piece of land that needs protecting," she says.