Dr John Wamsley (born 1938) is an Australian environmentalist. He was the Prime Minister's Environmentalist of the Year for 2003. Wamsley is known for his attempt to set up a network of wildlife sanctuaries across Australia. [1]
Wamsley was born in Ourimbah, New South Wales in 1938. His passion for Australian wildlife was born when the seven-year-old Wamsley's family moved to a 67 hectare bushland block at Niagara Park. At age sixteen Wamsley became a trainee metallurgist with BHP. Dissatisfied with the job he became a labourer in BHP's open-hearth furnaces and worked a second job renovating run down houses. By age 23 Wamsley was a millionaire. Approximately two years later Wamsley entered the University of Newcastle, Australia. The thirty-year-old Wamsley graduated with a PhD in Mathematics and moved to Flinders University to lecture. [2] His doctoral thesis from the University of Queensland, at only 70 pages, is among the shortest theses in the library. [3]
June 1969 saw the purchase of a dairy farm at Mylor, South Australia, that was to become Wamsley's first sanctuary, Warrawong. Wamsley eradicated all feral plants and animals from the sanctuary and erected a surrounding fence to preserve the sanctuary's feral free state. [2] Wamsley entered the public eye when he attended a tourism awards ceremony wearing a hat made from the pelt of a dead feral cat. The ensuing controversy led to a change in the law, allowing feral cats to be legally killed. [4]
With the view to duplicating the success of the Warrawong wildlife sanctuary in South Australia, Earth Sanctuaries Limited (ESL) was floated on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) in 2000. [5] At its peak, ESL had 11 prospective sanctuaries in 3 states accounting for 100,000 hectares. [5] ESL was successful in some rewilding and ecosystem restoration projects. [5] By pioneering feral-proof fencing, native Australian animals were successfully re-introduced where they were locally extinct. [5] However commercial success was elusive, and ESL was wound up and delisted in 2005. [5] ESL was the world's first publicly listed company whose business was conservation. [5]