The Geelong Field Naturalists Club (GFNC) is an Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n regional amateur scientific natural history

Natural history

Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...

 and conservation

Habitat conservation

Habitat conservation is a land management practice that seeks to conserve, protect and restore, habitat areas for wild plants and animals, especially conservation reliant species, and prevent their extinction, fragmentation or reduction in range...

 society which was founded in 1961 by Trevor Pescott

Trevor Pescott

Trevor William Pescott is an Australian naturalist, conservationist and writer, based in Geelong, Victoria. He was born in Ballarat and educated in Geelong, qualifying with a Diploma of Civil Engineering from the Gordon Institute of Technology...

. It is based in Geelong, Victoria

Geelong, Victoria

Geelong is a port city located on Corio Bay and the Barwon River, in the state of Victoria, Australia, south-west of the state capital; Melbourne. It is the second most populated city in Victoria and the fifth most populated non-capital city in Australia...

, with the aims of:

• preserving and protecting native flora and fauna
• promoting the conservation of natural resources and the protection of endangered species and habitats, and
• recording information and knowledge about the flora and fauna of the Geelong region

The GFNC, with its President at the time, Jack Wheeler, was instrumental in the early 1960s in establishing the Ocean Grove Nature Reserve

Ocean Grove Nature Reserve

The Ocean Grove Nature Reserve is a rectangular, 1.43 km2 nature reserve next to the town of Ocean Grove and 25 km south-east of the city of Geelong, on the Bellarine Peninsula, Victoria, Australia. It contains the only significant remnant of native woodland on the Bellarine Peninsula as it was...

. The logo of the club features the Small Ant-blue butterfly

Acrodipsas myrmecophila

The Small Ant-blue is a butterfly of the Lycaenidae family. It is found in the south-east of Australia.The wingspan is about 25 mm. The larvae feed on the larvae of the ant species Papyrius nitidus. The butterfly features on the logo of the Geelong Field Naturalists Club.-External links:*...

, an endangered myrmecophilous

Myrmecophily

Myrmecophily is the term applied to positive interspecies associations between ants and a variety of other organisms such as plants, arthropods, and fungi...

species that used to be found in the reserve.

Publications

The GFNC publishes a monthly magazine, the Geelong Naturalist, as well as the annual Geelong Bird Report. It also publishes books on the natural history of the Geelong region.

Further reading

• Daly, Charles; Pescott, Edward Edgar; Hill, Mrs E.E.; Hope, G.B.; & Deller, Ernest G. (1945). The History of the Geelong Field Naturalists' Club, 1880-1932: excerpts and letters.