Living in one of Australia's fastest growing regional areas, Anna Noon was watching in despair as nature made way for sprawling housing developments.

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"There was a lot of land clearing happening," she says of her home at Lake Macquarie in the rapidly-expanding NSW Hunter region.

"I knew that was leading to habitat loss, species extinction and exacerbating climate change."

The former social worker felt compelled to act and began volunteering for local tree-planting programs.

Five decades before, Japanese ecologist and b

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