Young Environmentalist of the Year Award 

Highly Commended: Isabelle Zhu-Maguire

Isabelle is a PhD student at the ANU and an advocate for inclusion, diversity and justice within climate processes. Her PHD specifically focuses on how countries listen to climate advocacy. In her spare time, Izzy volunteers on climate justice campaigns. Most recently, Izzy has kickstarted and taken leadership of the Conservation Council’s Fossil Fuel Ad Ban Campaign. Unfortunately Isabelle could not attend, so there is no photo. 

Winner: Jess Travers-Wolf

Jess is an ANU student of Public Policy and Arts and a passionate advocate for the environment. She has worked across a number of projects and organisations fighting for environmental justice, including co-founding the Duty of Care campaign, organising with the Bob Brown Foundation, volunteering for community independents, and working with the Raise Our Voice political youth advocacy organisation, and the Greens. 

In the past 18 months in particular, Jess has continued to campaign for a duty of care for future generations to be enshrined in Australia’s environment laws. As part of this work, Jess helped organise dozens of young people from around Australia to visit the Federal Parliament and advocate the Duty of Care legislation to politicians. She also advocated in the national media with an article in the Guardian. Also in the past 18 months, Jess organised the ACT’s rally for native forests in November 2024, one of the nationwide rallies to end native forest logging.

Jess’s environmental advocacy, through Duty of Care campaign and the Bob Brown Foundation’s rally for native forests, has been work at a local level having a national impact. Additionally, she is an example of a young person leading work that upskills and promotes other young people to advocate for the environment and climate. Her understated and humble leadership inspires and welcomes fellow young people to the environment movement.

Working Together Award, sponsored by Alexander Watson Home Insulation

Highly commended: Rising Tide

Rising Tide is a volunteer-led, grassroots group focused on climate justice. In 2024, Rising Tide successfully mobilised 7,000 people into helping blockade Newcastle’s Coal Port over a 7 period, before coming to Canberra for a 3-day occupation on Parliament Lawns in what was known as the Canberra Wave. These actions marked a significant escalation in Australia’s climate movement and held the Government to account on their climate record. 

Highly commended: Canberra City Farm 

The Canberra City Farm is a community of volunteers who come together to grow food, fibre and medicinal plants using principles of regenerative agriculture. Their contributions to the community include being a home for like-minded organisations and weekly deliveries of produce to a food relief agency. In October we will celebrate our first decade at this site whilst facing an uncertain future as the ACT Government reviews our use of the land.

Winner: SEE Change 

SEE Change is a grassroots charitable organisation focused on making improvements to the sustainability of our Society, Environment and Economy (SEE) within the Canberra region. SEE Change’s unique structure fosters the creation of volunteer led groups to take practical action on addressing climate change and improving sustainability. It does this by providing the enabling infrastructure for groups to get on with what they want to achieve, by providing ‘back-office’ administrative, financial, and technological support. By doing so, volunteers have the opportunity to form SEE Change Groups to address environmental issues that they otherwise would not have had the capacity on their own to tackle. 

Through the passion, tenacity and leadership of SEE Change’s retiring Executive Director, Paula Mance, SEE Change has grown significantly in its size and impact over the last 18 months. In quantitative terms, under Paula Mance’s leadership, SEE Change membership has gone from 570 to 730 members (up 28%); SEE Change’s volunteers have more than tripled from 50 to over 168 volunteers (up 236%); the number of SEE Change volunteer groups has grown from 5 to 17 (with more being formed); SEE Change conducted over 180 separate community events, ranging from workshops, hands on experiences, education, stalls etc reaching over 13,500 Canberrans; SEE Change successfully renewed its contract to run the Electric Bike Library, including setting up a satellite service in Kambah to give people on the southside access; and SEE Change successfully delivered self-sustaining soil regeneration and community gardening education projects. 

Environmental Protection Award

Highly commended: Pamela Collett and the Friends of Callum Brae

Under Pamela Collett’s convenorship, the Friends of Callum Brae Nature Reserve have been mobilising a community campaign against InvoCare’s proposed development of Callum Brae Nature Reserve. This proposed destructive private crematorium complex would be on the boundary of the Callum Brae Nature Reserve, one of the largest, best-connected and most diverse areas of critically endangered Yellow Box–Blakely’s Red Gum Grassy Woodland remaining in Australia. They have collected signatures on two petitions (583 + 252) and over 80 submissions opposing InvoCare’s private crematorium complex.

Winner: Rainer Rehwinkel

Rainer is a lifelong naturalist with a passion for ornithology and native flora. Rainer’s first career was in horticulture while he volunteered with Bungendore Landcare and contributed to establishing Brooks Hill Reserve. Later in his career, Rainer worked as a grassy ecosystems ecologist and threatened species officer for the NSW government. Professional highlights of Rainer’s include: establishing a grassland reserve, surveying thousands of grassy sites, initiating grassy ecosystems modelling, participating in recovery planning, reserve management planning and strategic planning, undertaking woodland restoration, working on flora and fauna conservation projects, co-authoring field guides, scientific papers and a book chapter, presenting at conferences and field events, and tutoring at UC. Despite retiring in 2015, Rainer has not stopped working and has instead undertaken formal bird surveys, founded Lawson Landcare, and volunteered with Friends of Grasslands.

Winner: Amy Jowers-Blain 

As well as being a mother, Amy dedicates her life, time and energy to community building and environmental causes. She manages local food pantries to help support food security in the community and she is an active member of a range of climate groups and habitat programs. Amy is both a leader and volunteer as needed. She always seems to find time for people and planet, with actions big and small, whether that be finding support for a new migrant experiencing domestic violence in need of shelter, writing about the effects of bushfire on children, raising awareness on social media about habitat for Canberra’s earless dragon, or meeting with politicians to hold them to account. But she has truly gone above and beyond in her work regenerating and protecting the Ainslie Volcanics Grasslands. Amy’s peaceful protest efforts in February of this year successfully protected the Grasslands from impending construction and resulted in her arrest on charges that were later dropped.

Amy Jowers-Blain was unfortunately unable to attend, so the award was accepted by Danny Jowers-Blain on her behalf.