The Sunshine Coast Environment Council plays a crucial role in protecting habitat of threatened species, threatened ecological communities and migratory birds. Much of the vegetation along the coastal strip, including the Wallum, is habitat for threatened species. It also contains a number of RAMSAR sites (eg. Pumicestone Passage and Tin Can Bay). SCEC is very active raising awareness and lobbying for the protection of the native coastal vegetation in the wider Sunshine Coast Area. Recently, with the proposed closure of the Moreton Sugar mill in Nambour, there has been much speculation with regard to the future land use of the Cane lands, some of which is still under native vegetation, but originally designated for cane production. SCEC is actively promoting its use for nature conservation, revegetation (to close gaps in wildlife corridors) or primary production, but strongly and vocally opposed to residential development. SCEC has advocated and lobbied strongly for the declaration of State lands in the Noosa Maroochy Wallum National Estate Area as National Parks, - with considerable success.

Dr Valerie Lewis - President

Valerie E Lewis was born in Canada and did her undergraduate and post graduate (PhD)training in psychology, in Canada and the USA. She came to Australia in 1971 to establish the first graduate diploma in counselling psychology at the West Australian Institute of Technology (now Curtin University).

Valerie established a private practice as a clinical psychologist and continued to teach post graduate courses at universities in Queensland and West Australia until retiring in 2002. Since retiring, Val has been an active participant at SCEC and has served on the management committee for several years, as well as editing the newsletter.

Valerie lives at Coolum Beach and is a proud grandmother of two girls. Her other interests include reading, the arts, fitness and health.

Just over twenty years ago on the Sunshine Coast there were an assortment of groups mostly consisting of a very few people who belonged to several different environmental organisations - ‘they were wearing many hats’. And in fact they were regularly seeing the same faces at their various group meetings; so often that the idea to combine forces arose – to form an umbrella group to gather strength to fight for the issues of the day.

On 21 April, 1980,15 community groups came together and formed the Sunshine Coast Environment Council (SCEC) Inc. Today SCEC has more than 40 member groups, stretching from Cooloola to Caboolture, and over 300 individual, family and business members. Here are some of the highlights of 25 years of environmental activism by SCEC and its member groups, without which the Sunshine Coast might have been a very different place.