29/08/2026
Harry Butler knew the Julimar Forest
HARRY BUTLER — 50 YEARS ON.
HE KNEW JULIMAR
In the early 1970s, Harry Butler worked as a Conservation Consultant on a guide to the vertebrate wildlife of Western Australia’s State Forests.
For the purposes of that work, the forests were divided into just five broad regions.
One was:
'The Julimar forest.'
But it’s what the Forests Department wrote alongside Butler’s work that makes this old document particularly interesting today.
Even then, the problem was understood.
Much of the surrounding land had already been cleared for agriculture and other purposes, with the consequent destruction of wildlife habitat.
State Forests and National Parks therefore represented some of the only substantial refuges remaining for native animals and birds across much of the region.
The Department described State Forests as important for:
'the maintenance of the native species.'
That was more than 50 years ago.
Now jump forward to 2021.
Speaking to Stockhead about exploration of Julimar State Forest, then Chalice Mining Managing Director Alex Dorsch said:
“Fortunately, Julimar state forest is not a national park; it’s basically the lowest conservation level of Crown land in WA. That makes it very much open for mining and exploration.”
— Alex Dorsch, Chalice Mining, Stockhead, 2021.
Nearly 50 years earlier, State Forest was being recognised for the refuge it provided native fauna as surrounding habitat disappeared.
Decades later, the lower legal protection afforded to Julimar State Forest was being described as “fortunate” in the context of gaining access for mining and exploration.
Those are two very different ways of looking at the same landscape.
Because a legal classification tells us what activities may be permitted in a forest.
It doesn’t tell us what that forest is worth.
And perhaps that is the most striking thing about finding Harry Butler’s old work.
More than half a century ago, the basic principle was already understood:
As habitat disappears from the surrounding landscape, the habitat that remains becomes increasingly important.
Today we know vastly more about biodiversity, threatened species, habitat loss and ecological connectivity than we did then.
Harry Butler was documenting 'the Julimar forest' all those years ago.
And here we are, 50 years later, once again deciding what this landscape is worth.
Perhaps the question isn’t simply what we are legally allowed to do to Julimar.
Perhaps the question is what we choose to protect when we still have the choice.
HARRY BUTLER — 50 YEARS ON
50 years of environmental knowledge.
WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?
