OBITUARY
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Dr Robert (Bob) Geoffrey Hewett Green
November 4, 1925 - August 29, 2013
BOB Green survived a 20-metre fall from a pine tree while collecting specimens although the fall put him in hospital for five months.
He almost drowned when he fell fully clothed from a dinghy while on the West Coast doing the same thing.
Dr Green's collecting forays around the state were legendary.
They started while he was still a child growing up on his family's Middle Park farm at Antill Ponds and built in intensity during a 30-year career at Launceston's Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery.
The career started in an honorary capacity as a part-time contributor and curator and culminated in his appointment as museum and art gallery curator of zoology and director.
His expeditions included one of his best-known projects - a 15-year scientific monitoring of the impact on wildlife of clear-felling and regrowth on Maggs Mountain above Lake Rowallan in the Central Highlands.
Dr Green had started donating his vast zoological collections to like-minded institutions before he died.
The R. H. Green Collection with its huge display of eggs was lodged a number of years ago with the Australian National Wildlife Collections in Canberra.
Birdlife Australia said in an article in its latest edition that Tasmania had lost one of its most eminent ornithologists and Birdlife Australia had lost one of its longest serving members when Dr Green died on August 29.
He joined the national association when he was still a teenager and was a member for more than 70 years.
But it wasn't only birds that attracted the eye of this most passionate of natural scientists.
He was a hands-on collector uncovering at least 50 previously unknown species of flora and fauna.
About 10 species have ``greenii'' at the end of their international scientific names including a bird louse, three fleas, a mire, two fish, a skink and a parasitic fly.
His knowledge of Tasmanian wildlife was encyclopaedic and his advice was sought by experts from around the world.
This was despite Dr Green being forced to leave school - Launceston Church Grammar School - when he was 15 to help run the family farm during World War II.
He was one of the best known and most respected supporters of the notion that Tasmanian tigers or thylacines could still exist.
But he would never provide detailed information on his theory.
Dr Green was born in Launceston in 1925, a son of Geoffrey Hewett Green, who was an MLC and became president of the Legislative Council.
In 1987 he was awarded the natural history medallion by the Field Naturalist Club of Victoria and in 1990 he was made an Order of Australia in the general division.
The honour of curator emeritus was conferred by the Launceston City Council in recognition of his distinguished service.
Dr Green published several books and more than 120 articles on the flora and fauna of Tasmania.
His wife, Val, died in the mid-1990s.
He is survived by their six children, Bill, Ted, Reg, Beth, Jen and Sal and their families.