JOHN B JACK March 1, 1927-March 25, 2022

Foresters are not generally known for their environmental credentials (a statement they dispute), but John Jack was undoubtedly an exemplar in that regard, as well as in many others.

John’s forestry training was during the post-war era, when Victorians greatly respected foresters for ensuring wartime firewood supplies, and the provision of timber for the subsequent home-building boom. Moreover, their role in the massive 1939 bushfires had drawn praise.

At that time, the Victorian School of Forestry at Creswick trained officers for the Forests Commission, which managed the State Forest that then covered around one-third of the state. John topped his graduating class in 1946, later gaining bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

Early field postings were to Stanley and Beechworth, where John and other radicals formed a regional branch of the Institute of Foresters of Australia, a branch that straddled the Murray River and encouraged landowners and the general community to become members.

By the time John left the commission in 1976 as head of education and research, public respect for foresters had dwindled dramatically, with conservation activists campaigning about the obvious impacts of what had become industrial-scale logging. Notwithstanding the success of post-logging regeneration of such forests, the activists, who held considerable political sway, deemed this ecological disturbance intolerable.

John’s next appointment was deputy secretary in the Department of Premier and Cabinet. He travelled extensively with premier Dick Hamer, and in 1978 became inaugural chair of the Garden State Committee. Indeed, the term “Garden State” evolved into Victoria’s subtitle. This committee, which included Professor Carrick Chambers and television personality Kevin Heinz, initiated many projects in cities, towns and country, including along major highways.

Simultaneously, leading the Victorian division of the Institute of Foresters Australia, John sought an issue to restore foresters’ morale. That issue was tree decline in rural Victoria, referring to the environmental impacts of land-clearing on the farmland covering two-thirds of the state, and the natural attrition of the remnant trees. One early enterprise was Project Treecover, including several prominent broadacre plantings near several major roads.

Drawing attention to that issue led directly to a landmark national conference in Melbourne in 1980 – Focus on Farm Trees – bringing farmers, public figures, conservationists and tree scientists together to devise practical responses. Hamer opened the conference, and hosted a reception for attendees.

Several farm tree groups sprang up quickly; some operate still. Shortly, in 1986, minister Joan Kirner, later premier herself, coined and launched Landcare. Soon to be supported by Heather Mitchell from the Victorian Farmers Federation, Landcare importantly was, and remains, a bipartisan affair. The term and concept have long since spread nationally and internationally.