He carried out his assessments in a range of dissimilar landscapes leading to the identification and protection of many critically threatened ecosystems across the state during a period of rapid and widespread land development under the Joh Bjelke-Petersen government.

Stanton would later describe the sand island landscapes of his childhood around Moreton Bay as "unspoiled paradises of forest, swamp, flowering heath, giant sandhills, and seemingly endless surf and still water beaches" citing the subsequent broad-scale development of many such environments on the South-Eastern coastal fringe of Queensland in the 1960s as an early motivating influence upon his conservation work.

[30][31] The early conservation work conducted in the Wet Tropics by Stanton, along with that of Webb and Tracey, was instrumental to the later protection of many rare and threatened landscapes within the region, including the lowland rainforests of the Daintree and Cape Tribulation area.

His oration ‘The Wilderness of Cape York Peninsula’ was delivered alongside addresses by Bob Brown, Laurens van der Post, Jean Dorst, Ian Player, Madame Laurence de Bonneval, Geoff Mosley and Ray Arnett amongst other delegates representing 25 countries.

[37][38] The congress was to result in the commitment to protect areas of virgin rainforest in Queensland under park status by the premier of the state as well as the recommendation for the inclusion of the Great Barrier Reef on the World Heritage list by then Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser.

During this period Stanton produced a body of field research which was to inform and support the listing process of the Wet Tropics of Queensland World Heritage area and its ongoing ecological management.

[47] Taking the form of a systematic ecological survey and mapping project, the study examined the full range of rainforest areas in the region with initial designation on aerial photographs followed by ground-truthing and stratification into 72 separate forest types.

In 1983, during the construction of the road through the Cape Tribulation National Park to Bloomfield he was suspended from the position of Regional Director for several months after having stood in the path of bulldozers in order to protect both the lives of protestors and what he considered to be the most significant tracts of rainforest.

[63][64] Later, in 1994, Stanton was recommended for disciplinary action by the State Government after he ordered that a vehicle containing guns and chainsaws which were suspected of being used for the purpose of smuggling the seeds of the threatened Foxtail Palm be sent to the Cooktown Police Station.