Gresswell Forest - George Paras
Hosted by Ben Cullen
If you ever get the chance to walk with George Paras, take it immediately. He sees the landscape through a lens shaped by decades of experience, and by all the knowledge he's pooled from the peers and mentors around him. Few people in the world can claim such long, continuous oversight of a conservation reserve in an urban area.
He's experimented. He's watched seasons change. He's learned from the land itself, noticing the smallest shifts and drawing the biggest lessons from them.
Patience came up again and again in our conversation. It's often called a virtue, but in conservation it's easy to overlook. We can be in such a rush for change that we cause damage without even realising it. George has spent a career resisting that rush, and the restorative work he's achieved because of it is remarkable.
As we walked, I found him, as always, a warm, excited, and generous communicator. For someone who's worked the same patch of land for over forty years, he still talks about it like he discovered it yesterday.
He told me stories of sugar gliders returning through artificial habitat creation, of butterfly populations translocated back into the landscape, of a place transformed and re-seen. He even walked me through the full journey of a single fish reaching Greswell Forest, a level of detail most of us will never get the chance to hear firsthand.
We're lucky to have George in the conservation world. He's taught many, cared for a lot of land, and Melbourne's conservation landscape is better for having someone so patient, generous, and dedicated behind it.
Gresswell Forest is part of the Gresswell Nature Conservation Reserves, spanning around 50 hectares in Melbourne's north-east, in the suburb of Macleod/Bundoora. Alongside neighbouring Gresswell Hill and the Gresswell Habitat Link, it protects around 70 hectares of remnant woodland and wetland, much of it now under the care of Parks Victoria after decades of management by La Trobe University. It remains one of the most intact pockets of grassy woodland left in the Melbourne region, and a critical refuge for the birds, reptiles, and other wildlife you'll hear about in the recording.
https://www.parks.vic.gov.au/places-to-see/parks/gresswell-nature-conservation-reserves
https://vnpa.org.au/programs/nature-stewards-3/