Staff Profile
Penelope Figgis
Visiting Fellow
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| Phone: | +61 2 9850 |
| Fax: | +61 2 9850 7972 |
Profile
Penelope Figgis has played a prominent role in the Australian environment movement for 30 years, contributing through policy development, public speaking, lecturing and writing. She has been a Visiting Fellow of the Graduate School of the Environment, Macquarie University since 2005.
She is Vice Chair for Australia and New Zealand of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas and a Board Member of the Sydney Olympic Park Authority. She chairs the Parklands Advisory Committee and is a Director of the Parklands Foundation. Her other current roles include membership of the Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife Advisory Council and she is a Visiting Fellow at the Graduate School of the Environment, Macquarie University.
Penny developed her passion for all things natural in childhood. Her parents were keen anglers and sought out the wild beaches and estuaries of northern NSW. In the early seventies after travelling and working in Asia and Europe Penny translated an emerging consciousness of the global threats to nature into activism and became involved as a volunteer in the battles to protect the Wollemi wilderness in the northern Blue Mountains and the NSW rainforests.
After a decade of teaching Penny graduated with first class honours graduate in Political Science from Sydney University in 1979 with a thesis on the wilderness movement of Australia. After several years tutoring in Political Science at Sydney she became the chief national lobbyist of the Australian Conservation Foundation in late 1981 during the height of the Franklin campaign.
As the first person with a political science background to work at national government level she is widely credited with raising the political sophistication and campaigning skills of the national environment movement. She obtained high levels of access to the governments of the day and communicated political information in and out of Canberra on a wide range of issues, not just to the Foundation but to the broader environment movement. Other major issues of the time were Antarctica, Kakadu and Uranium mining and the beginnings of the battle for the Wet Tropical Rainforests. She played a major role in the Franklin campaign in Canberra and the dedication of Stage Two (the flood plains) of Kakadu National Park.
In the early eighties she travelled widely with environmental work and bushwalked in many of Australia's finest natural areas.
After leaving employment with the Foundation in 1984 to marry and live in Central Australia, she was elected to the ACF Council and in 1985 was elected its first woman Vice President. She subsequently served seventeen years as Vice president and on leaving in 2005 to take up her current position was made an Honorary Life Member of the Foundation and its second Patron.
During her time in Central Australia she became engaged by the issue of the interface between conservation and Aboriginal lands and wrote a widely circulated study called "Conservation and Aboriginal Lands" (1985). In 1985, following the hand back of Uluru to traditional owners, she was appointed to the Board of Management of Uluru National Park where she served for five years, initiating among many things a ban on commercial products promotions in the park and the speedy nomination of Uluru for World Heritage listing to help insulate it from possible changes in government.
In 1988 she was appointed a Director of the Australian Tourist Commission. During six years with the Commission she contributed to a major elevation of environmental responsibility as an issue for the tourist industry. She is regarded as an authority on tourism and the environment, especially ecotourism and the impacts and implications of tourism on protected areas. She has given many papers including to conferences in Italy, Brazil and Venezuela and in 1993 was chosen as one of 24 international experts to participate in a symposium convened by the Rockefeller Foundation at its Bellagio Centre in Italy. She continues to give conference papers, lecture and undertake consultancies in this area.
For the last decade her major area of research has been the future of national parks and protected areas which includes biodiversity conservation on lands outside parks. In 1999 she published a major overview of directions in protected area policy, Australia's National Parks and Protected Areas: Future Directions, (ACIUCN) and in 2004 Conservation on Private Lands: the Australian Experience (IUCN). Her involvement in the complex issues around protected area management was engaged during several years on the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Consultative Committee (1996-8).
She is the author of many articles, chapters and papers as well as a frequent public speaker at national and international conferences. Her publications include Rainforests of Australia (ed.) and a work on Australia's existing and potential World Heritage Areas, Australia's Wilderness Heritage (co-author with J.G Mosley). In 1994/5 she was a regular commentator on environmental issues for ABC Radio National and 2BL.
She has been a judge of various environmental awards, including the National Landcare Awards, the IBM Environmental Excellence Awards, the Readers Digest Environmental Awards and the British Airways Tourism for Tomorrow Awards.
In 1994 she was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for her services to conservation and the environment, in 2003 was awarded the Centenary Medal for outstanding contribution to the environment. On Australia Day 2006 was awarded one of Australia's highest honours, an Officer in the Order of Australia (AO) for service to the environment, nature conservation and sustainable tourism.
She is married to Bruce Donald AM, lawyer and legal commentator and has two daughters, Michaela 22 and Rosalinde 20.