"It's a sad day," the former Greens leader Bob Brown said on Sunday as he credited Mr Toyne with a historic transformation of care for the environment and farming land.

Mr Toyne, who was executive director of the Australian Conservation Foundation between 1986 and 1992, and deputy secretary of the federal environment department in the 1990s, died after a long battle with bowel cancer.

"He was a legend of the environment movement," said Ben Oquist, strategy director for the Australia Institute and former chief of staff to Dr Brown and his successor as Greens leader, Christine Milne. "In particular, he brought the environmental and farming communities together in ways that proved to be historic."

Mr Toyne established the National Landcare program with former National Farmers Federation head Rick Farley, who died in 2006.

"That was huge," Dr Brown told Fairfax Media. "He and Rick Farley – you can call it serendipity, but I think it was the huge intellect of those two men that struck a historic formula for Landcare, which is now lauded around the world. It has raised the wellbeing of rural and regional Australia and its environment that brings global admiration."

The program has been adopted in America and Africa.

"I have a particularly fond recollection of leaning against the blade of a bulldozer and talking tactics with Phillip in Tasmania's misty Lemonthyme Forest, near Cradle Mountain, in the 1980s," Dr Brown said. "It was about to be logged from end to end. But it was saved in 1989 with the inclusion of that valley in the world heritage area despite the Gray government in Tasmania wanting the logging to go ahead."

Mr Toyne had been critical in that campaign.

"But I think you can't go post his work in bringing onto the public and political agenda the rights of traditional owners to their lands," Dr Brown said.

Mr Toyne was instrumental in the handover of Uluru to its traditional owners in 1985, when they were granted title to the national park.

Mr Toyne was lured into Aboriginal affairs while taking a road trip around Australia in his 20s.

"The really significant thing for me was stopping off at this little ramshackle collection of humpies alongside a roadhouse and realising quite dramatically that there were people who were obviously ancient Australians who I couldn't communicate with at all," he told the ABC in an interview last year.

Although trained in law, he became a teacher in a remote Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory, and he realised that elders had no concept of the land belonging to anyone else.

"I had to say to them not only is it not your country in European law but it could be disposed of in all sorts of ways that could disadvantage you."

He became the Pitjantjatjara people's lawyer and negotiated the passage of the Pitjantjatjara Land Rights Act before taking on the Uluru campaign.

He also became president of Bush Heritage Australia.

The Australian Conservation Foundation's current chief ececutive officer, Kelly O'Shanassy, said: "With Phillip Toyne's passing Australia has lost a man who contributed hugely to conservation and Indigenous rights.

"Phillip Toyne played a key role in having the Daintree Rainforest included on the World Heritage list and in securing proper protection for Kakadu and the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Areas.

"During his time as director he made sure all ACF's conservation work in northern Australia was done in collaboration with Indigenous groups.

"This principle remains absolutely central to ACF's work."

Landcare had "engaged communities across Australia in the job of reversing damage to farmland, public land and waterways".

"There are now more than 6000 Landcare and Coastcare groups around the country, working to improve public and private land, rivers, creeks and beaches.

"ACF expresses its deep condolences to Mr Toyne's family and friends."