John Tenison Salmon CBE (28 June 1910 – 4 May 1999) was a New Zealand photographer, entomologist, academic, conservationist, and author.
His first job in 1928 was with the Land and Income Tax Department in the capital city and in parallel, he studied science at Victoria University College.
[1] Salmon continued his studies of collembola and submitted photos to the Royal Photographic Society in London, for which he was elected an associate in 1937.
He also became a noted conservationist and argued strongly, and with the help of professional bodies, against power projects that flooded or permanently changed sites of significant beauty of ecological value.
Salmon published a book Heritage destroyed: the crisis in scenery preservation in New Zealand in 1960 and it became an important text that help shape the country's conservation movement, then in its infancy.
His profile helped him with becoming deputy president of the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society in 1971 and was instrumental in forming an alliance of environmental groups to oppose the Manapouri project.
Salmon continued publishing books on plants and over time, input from botanists ensured increased scientific rigour.
[1] Salmon won the Loder Cup, a conservation award, in 1967 for his work on bringing the negative impact of development to the awareness of the wider public.
With health declining, Salmon gave up his public roles in 1983 and they moved to Taupō where they had owned a holiday home for a long time.