Editing Bill Mollison (section)

==Life and work==
===Biography===
Bruce Charles "Bill" Mollison was born in 1928 in the [[Bass Strait]] fishing village of  [[Stanley, Tasmania|Stanley]] located in the north-west of [[Tasmania]], Australia.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.echo.net.au/2016/09/permaculture-design-leader-bill-mollison-dies/ | title=Permaculture-design leader Bill Mollison dies | publisher=Echo Netdaily | date=26 September 2016 | access-date=29 September 2016 | author=Felix, Luis}}</ref> In 1987, he moved from Tasmania to [[Tyalgum]] in the [[Tweed Valley]] of northern [[New South Wales]], where he lived for the next decade before returning to Tasmania.<ref name="robynfrancis"/> He spent his final years at [[Sisters Beach, Tasmania|Sisters Beach]], north-western Tasmania.<ref name="abc.net.au"/> He died in Hobart, Tasmania, in 2016, aged 88. He was survived by his fifth wife, Lisa, four daughters and two sons.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://permaculturenews.org/2016/09/25/bill-mollison/ | title="With deep sorrow, we wish to inform family and friends that Bruce Charles "Bill" Mollison, the "Father of Permaculture," has passed away." | publisher=The Permaculture Research Institute | date=25 September 2016 | access-date=30 September 2016}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/oct/10/bill-mollison-obituary | title=Bill Mollison obituary: Ecologist and one of the co-creators of permaculture | publisher=Guardian News & Media Ltd. | work=The Guardian | date=10 October 2016 | access-date=12 October 2016 | author=Dunwell, Matt}}</ref>

===Career===
Mollison left school at age 15 to help run the family bakery. In the following 10 years he worked as a shark fisherman, seaman, forester, mill worker, trapper, snarer, tractor-driver and naturalist.<ref name="abc.net.au">O'Connor, Ted (26 September 2016) {{cite news|url=http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-26/tributes-flow-in-for-permaculture-father-bill-mollison/7878118|title='You started a quiet revolution': Tributes flow for permaculture 'father' Bill Mollison|newspaper=ABC News |date=26 September 2016 |publisher=Australian Broadcasting Corporation}}</ref>

In 1954, at the age of 26, Mollison joined and worked for the 'Wildlife Survey Section' of the [[Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation]] (CSIRO).<ref name="grahambell"/> In the 1960s, he worked as a curator at the Tasmanian Museum. He also worked with the Inland Fisheries Commission, where he was able to resume his field work. In 1966, he entered the University of Tasmania. After he received a degree in bio-geography, he stayed on to lecture and teach and developed the unit of Environmental Psychology.<ref name="grahambell">{{cite web | url=http://grahambell.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Bill-Mollison-Obituary-25.9.16.pdf | title=Bill Mollison Obituary | publisher=grahambell.org | date=26 September 2016 | access-date=29 September 2016 | author=Bell. Graham | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161019235659/http://grahambell.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Bill-Mollison-Obituary-25.9.16.pdf | archive-date=19 October 2016 | url-status=dead }}</ref> He retired from teaching in 1979.<ref name="Preface to IP"/>

===Development of permaculture===
Mollison's work with the CSIRO laid the foundation for his life-long passion: Permaculture.<ref name="grahambell"/> Mollison told his student [[Toby Hemenway]] that the original idea for permaculture came to him in 1959 while he was observing marsupials browsing in the Tasmanian rain forests, because he was "inspired and awed by the life-giving abundance and rich interconnectedness of this eco-system."<ref name="gaisgarden">{{cite book | title=Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture (2nd ed.) | url=https://archive.org/details/gaiasgardensecon00heme | url-access=limited | publisher=Chelsea Green Publishing | author=Hemenway, Toby | year=2009 | pages=[https://archive.org/details/gaiasgardensecon00heme/page/n43 5] | isbn=978-1603580298}}</ref> At that moment, Mollison jotted down the following words in his diary: "I believe that we could build systems that would function as well as this one does."<ref name="gaisgarden"/> By the late 1960s, he started developing ideas about stable agricultural systems on the southern Australian island state of Tasmania. This resulted from his own personal observations of the growth and use of the industrial-agricultural methods that he believed had rapidly degraded the soil of his native state.<ref name="nytimes.com">Raver, Anne (13 February 2013) {{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/garden/a-permaculture-love-story.html|title=Their Trip to Bountiful|work=The New York Times|date=13 February 2013 |last1=Raver |first1=Anne }}</ref> In his view, these same methods posed a danger because they were highly dependent on non-renewable resources, and were additionally poisoning land and water, reducing [[biodiversity]], and removing billions of tons of [[topsoil]] from previously fertile landscapes.<ref name="Preface to IP">''Introduction to Permaculture'', 2011, Mollison, p.v</ref> Writes Mollison:
{{blockquote|After many years as a scientist with the CSIRO Wildlife Survey Section and with the Tasmanian Inland Fisheries Department, I began to protest against the political and industrial systems I saw were killing us and the world around us. But I soon decided that it was no good persisting with opposition that in the end achieved nothing. I withdrew from society for two years; I did not want to oppose anything ever again and waste time. I wanted to come back only with something very positive, something that would allow us all to exist without the wholesale collapse of biological systems.<ref name="Preface to IP"/>}}

In 1974–75, he and [[David Holmgren]] "jointly evolved a framework for a sustainable agricultural system based on a multi-crop of perennial trees, shrubs, herbs (vegetables and weeds), fungi, and root systems" for which they coined the word "permaculture".<ref name="nytimes.com"/>   Holmgren was a student at the radical Environmental Design School in the Tasmanian College of Environmental Education.  Mollison was a senior tutor in the Psychology Dept of the University of Tasmania."<ref name="The Holistic Life">{{cite book | title=The Holistic Life - Sustainability Through Permaculture | publisher=Axiom Press | author=Lillington, Ian | year=2007 | pages=26–27 | isbn=978-1864764376}}</ref>

Originally intended as a contraction of permanent agriculture, Mollison quickly realised it was a system for permanent culture, as without a productive landscape, a healthy ecology and a [[circular economy]], no culture would survive. Permaculture began as both a positive concept – open to new information – and a practice that could integrate the knowledge about sustainable, ecological techniques from all parts of the world.

Soon after permaculture was first introduced and then put into practice by the public, Mollison recognized that permaculture principles encompassed a movement that included not only agriculture, horticulture, architecture, and ecology, but also economic systems, land access strategies, and legal systems for businesses and communities:
{{blockquote|As I saw permaculture in the 1970s, it was a beneficial assembly of plants and animals in relation to human settlements, mostly aimed towards household and community self-reliance, and perhaps as a "commercial endeavor" only arising from a surplus from that system. However, permaculture has come to mean more than just food-sufficiency in the household. Self-reliance in food is meaningless unless people have access to land, information, and financial resources. So in recent years it has come to encompass appropriate legal and financial strategies, including strategies for land access, business structures, and regional self-financing. This way it is a whole human system.<ref name="Preface to IP"/>}}

He helped found the first Permaculture Institute, established in 1979 to "teach the practical design of sustainable soil, water, plant, and legal and economic systems to students worldwide." Bill Mollison taught the first Permaculture Design course at Stanley, Tasmania in January 1980. It was attended by 10 Australian students including Max O'Lindegger and Denis McCarthy (co-recipients of the first Permaculture Institute's Community Service Award), Dave Blewett (author of Arid Land Permaculture), Ginger Gordy (second President of the Permaculture Association of WA), Kirsten Beggs (WA), John Fargher (SA) and Tagari Community members Andrew Jeeves & Simon Fjell (co-founder Permaculture Institute in 1979, currently Permaculture Institute International). In May 1980 Bill Mollison, his wife Philomena, Andrew Jeeves, Peter Moore (photographer) and Denis McCarthy began a three month lecture tour of USA and Canada, during which he visited & gave talks at the International Tree Crops Institute (Miles & Libby Merwin, Winters, CA), Farallones Institute Rural Centre (Sonoma, CA), Integral Urban House (Berkeley, CA), Village Homes (Davis, CA), Appropriate Technology Group (Professor Isao Fujimoto, Davis CA), The Tree People (Andy Lipkis, Los Angeles, CA), Rural Education Center (Samuel Kaymen, Wilton NH, in 1983 called Stonyfield Farm), New Alchemy Institute (John & Nancy Todd, Woods Hole, MA), Institute for Local Self-Reliance (Washington, DC), Office of Appropriate Technology (Scott Sklar, now Professor Scott Sklar, Director George Washington Solar Institute, Washington, DC), and The Farm (Summertown, TN)  He taught a three-week course at The Tree People in Los Angeles in 1981.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www. dianamarahenry.com/InlovingmemoryofBillMollison-Mylifeinpermaculture.htm}}</ref> In 1981, the first graduates of the permaculture design course (PDC) that he had helped to initiate, started to design permaculture systems in their respective communities.<ref name="Preface to IP"/> In this way, the philosophy of permaculture had begun to move beyond its original context in "land management" to cover most, if not all, aspects of human life.<ref>{{cite news | url=https://www.theguardian.com/society/2006/jul/19/communities.guardiansocietysupplement2 | title=The permaculture club | newspaper=The Guardian | date=18 July 2006 | access-date=29 September 2016 | author=Hodgson, Martin}}</ref>

In 1987, Mollison taught the first PDC course that was offered in India.<ref name="robynfrancis"/> By 2011 there had been over 300,000 such graduates practicing and teaching throughout the world.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://permacultureglobal.org/projects | title=Worldwide Permaculture Projects A growing list of permaculture projects worldwide | publisher=Permaculture Research Institute | date=2016 | access-date=29 September 2016}}</ref>

He has been called the founder<ref>{{cite web|title=The Companion to Tasmanian History|url=http://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/M/Bill%20Mollison.htm|work=University of Tasmania, Australia; Library|access-date=1 January 2013}}</ref><ref group="n">Although [[Joseph Russell Smith]] is not similarly referred to as the "father" of permaculture, some have offered the disclaimer that Smith, and not Mollison/Holmgren, was the first to write about a system of permanent agriculture in a book entitled ''Tree Crops'', published in 1929, and earlier in 1910, in a book entitled ''Breeding and Use of Tree Crops.'' Others would argue, however, that such a disclaimer is based on a common misunderstanding of permaculture as a specific style of agriculture or gardening, rather than an ecologically-inspired design system. A food forest certainly can be one outcome of a permaculture design process, but so can an organic backyard garden. From the Wikipedia article on permaculture: "a system of agricultural and social design principles centered on simulating or directly utilizing the patterns and features observed in natural ecosystems."</ref> and "father"<ref name="ABC News 2016">{{cite web |last1=O'Connor |first1=Ted |title=Tributes flow in for permaculture 'father' Bill Mollison |url=https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-26/tributes-flow-in-for-permaculture-father-bill-mollison/7878118 |work=ABC News |date=26 September 2016}}</ref> of [[permaculture]].