I'm a conservationist because of Rex Hunt. You know that 1970s Australian Rules footballer who later made a career as a fishing guru and with his over-the-top shouty footy commentary.
When I was a kid of eight or nine, weekends would involve being dragged out of bed pre-dawn by my dad to put the boat in the water of Port Phillip Bay. I enjoyed the fishing for the sport and got a thrill out of seeing what fish was on the end of the line on the rare occasion we got one to the surface. On weekends I would pore over Hunt's Fishing Port Phillip Bay and from it I would learn the behaviour of all the fish that were fit to eat, where to catch them and what tactics to use.
Reading this guide and others like it was my introduction to ecology. They filled me with a sense of wonder for what lived under the surface, but also a sense of anger and loss for what once was. They would often mention what sorts of fish you used to be able to catch in a particular location and how much bigger and more common they used to be. They documented the decline of our rivers, bays and oceans. It didn't feel right that we had impacted our environment so much that I couldn't catch huge snapper or salmon like the old blokes used to.
It's fair to say this was not a radical entry into conservation — it's a pretty conservative position to not want to stuff up your environment so that you can still catch fish. Theodore Roosevelt, one of the earliest exponents of conservation from a conservative point of view put it like this: 'Of all the questions which can come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us.'
The most prominent self-described conservative in Australia, former prime minister Tony Abbott, has expressed many views on conservation and on the merits of addressing climate change, but none of these views could be argued as coming from a position of conservatism that Teddy Roosevelt could agree with.
In echoes of his effort while prime minister to establish a global coalition of like-minded countries against climate change action,