Ms Plumwood lived alone, uncompromisingly and courageously. She was 67.

She was famous from tertiary institutions in Berkeley California to Finland, Czechoslovakia and Wales for her writings as an eco-feminist and deep ecologist philosopher.

Val Plumwood was the pioneer of many campaigns to save native hardwood forest in Australia. She led guided walks in the Monga Forest near Braidwood (which she helped to save) and was an irreplaceable font of knowledge of rainforest bush plants and birds.

Val held many academic positions throughout her career. However Val preferred to work as she lived; on her own terms. Even her relationship to technology was fraught.

Val's body bore the scars of a harrowing saltwater crocodile attack near Kakadu the early 1980s. As croc numbers were down at the time, Val appealed for the crocodile's life to be spared. Val's experience of being prey informed her vegetarianism and subsequent writings.

Val's integrity as a philosopher meant that she would not lend her name to reductive stories, museum installations, advertising or articles which, in her view, over-simplified her experience of nature as its most powerful.

The daughter of an egg farmer, Val deeply resented the emphasis on domestic chores over homework for a young female. In the early 60s Val identified with Sydney's free-spirited and academic 'push'.

Ms Plumwood had two children by her first husband John and Caitlin who predeceased her. Her second marriage was to Richard Routley with whom the stone house at Plumwood Mountain was built between Clyde Mountain and the town, and with whom she co authored an extraordinary range of books and papers.

Val leaves behind a broad network of friends, colleagues and former associates. She had close bonds with several wild creatures at Plumwood Mountain including a wombat Victor. She has arranged to bequeath her beloved 250 acres of regenerated bush to National Parks.

In many ways Val Plumwood's work echoed the legacy of that other famous conservationist who ended her days in Braidwood, poet Judith Wright.

It would appear that the death was as a result heart failure, possibly arising from an insect or snake bite.

Jane Salmon

Photo: Judith Adjani.