One of Tasmania's original conservationists has been remembered as a "great champion of the wilderness".
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Melva Truchanas died after a stroke last Wednesday. She was 92-years-old.
Melva was central to decades' long campaigns to preserve wilderness areas of Tasmania, including the ongoing bid to restore Lake Pedder and the successful Franklin Blockade of the early 1980s.
Those two events in Tasmania's environmental history are central to the state's conservationist movement and the formation of the Greens political party.
January 6 this year marked 50 years since her husband, renowned photographer and conservationist Olegas Truchanas, drowned on the Gordon River.
This year also marked 50 years since Lake Pedder was dammed, and 50 years of the campaign to restore it.
She was a fabulous advocate for the island's wild and scenic beauty.
- Bob Brown
Christine Milne, the former Greens' leader and convener of the Lake Pedder Restoration Committee, remembered Melva as a woman who dedicated her life to Tasmania's wild places.
"Melva was a much-admired, feisty woman who loved Tasmania's wild places and campaigned to protect them throughout her long life," Ms Milne said.
"She encouraged and supported young people to get involved and to get out and enjoy nature especially the south west wilderness."
Ms Milne said Melva met her husband, a Lithuanian immigrant, when she was a member of the Launceston Bushwalking Club.
"The pair married in 1954 and explored the wilderness together on many bushwalking and ski trips including at Cradle Mountain which she loved," Ms Milne said.
"When Lake Pedder was threatened, they threw themselves into the campaign to save the jewel of the south west."
Bob Brown, founder of the Greens, said Melva embodied the spirit of her husband's enduring quote about preserving Tasmania's wild places:
"If we can revise our attitudes towards the land under our feet; if we can accept a role of steward and depart from the role of the conqueror, if we can accept that man and nature are inseparable parts of the unified whole, then Tasmania can be a shining beacon in a dull, uniform and largely artificial world," Olegas said.
"She was a fabulous advocate for the island's wild and scenic beauty. A true Tasmanian champion," Mr Brown said.
"Melva was the cheery spirit who, more than anyone else, connected the original Lake Pedder defenders with today's growing campaign to restore the lake."
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