Protecting Country
The Prince of Wales was so struck by Larissa Hale’s inimitable connection to Country, she was awarded his 2022 $1.8 million Earthshot Prize. “There was a lot of screaming, a lot of jumping and a lot of tears,” says Larissa, 41, who belongs to the Yuku Baja Muliku people, in Cape York.
The mum-of-three came to Prince William’s attention after founding the Queensland Indigenous Women’s Ranger Network in 2018.
The rangers combine 65,000 years of Indigenous knowledge with modern conservation tools.
Their mission is to protect and restore their precious Land and Sea Country, which encompasses wet tropical rainforests and the Great Barrier Reef.
“It could be turtle tagging, marine monitoring of birds, dugongs and whales, taking photos of erosion sites and correlating that data,” Larissa tells Woman’s Day.
Looking at climate change through a cultural lens has yielded impressive results.
“If there’s something wrong, you know,” she says.
When the elders noticed a decline in the local mussel population, a scientific
