For over two decades, Marcus Ward has been an active and outspoken environmentalist. After moving to regional Victoria in 1980, he joined the Macedon Ranges Conservation Society in 1983, a group he led for over two decades. In 1999, Marcus was elected (and remains to this day) the founding president of the Cobaw and Wombat Forest Action Group (CAWFAG), which recently achieved a resounding victory when logging the Wombat Forest finally ended.

His work at these groups has provided him with a wealth of experience in bureaucratic and legal process. Marcus met with many state and federal ministers, appeared before many independent panels, presented cases before planning appeals, and attended court cases.

Marcus lives in western rural Victoria where he has worked for many years as an architect specialising in rural and remote housing. He runs an active practice with over 500 completed projects throughout Tasmania, New South Wales and Victoria.

Since joining the Greens in 1999, Marcus has run for federal and state seats, and his position as lead candidate for the Upper House for the Greens in West Victoria provides an opportunity to further much of the work he has been passionately involved in for nearly a decade:

• Consolidating forest campaign gains in the Otways, the Wombat and Portland;
• strengthening rural and regional communities with emerging opportunities;
• reversing the state’s continued biodiversity loss;
• maintaining our statewide moratorium on the introduction of commercial genetically modified food crops;
• insuring the state’s plantation estate is modified so that it complements local communities and the state’s environment;
• increasing protection for our coastal and marine environment;
• ending native forest woodchipping,
• stopping recreational duck hunting in Victoria;
• ending old growth and water catchment logging across Victoria and south-eastern New South Wales; and
• ending our state’s involvement in the live sheep and cattle export trade.

Marcus Ward is the Victorian Greens' spokesperson for Animals, GMO and Forests.

To contact Marcus Ward, please send an e-mail to marcusward@vic.greens.org.au or call 0427 235 254.

The Western Victoria Region covers an area from Horsham, Stawell, Maryborough and Kyneton in the north to the south-west coast in the south, and from the South Australian border in the west to Bacchus Marsh, Geelong and Queenscliff in the east.

For more information on the new electoral system for the Upper House, visit the Victorian Electoral Commission's website: http://www.vec.vic.gov.au

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