Born in Armadale, Western Australia, the youngest of eight children of migrant Croatian parents, Vincent Serventy graduated from the University of Western Australia in geology and psychology. He was a CSIRO researcher and teacher before beginning a career as a writer, lecturer and film-maker. He joined the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (RAOU) in 1942 and served as either its Branch Secretary or State Representative for Western Australia 1943–1959. In 1946 he became a life member of the Wildlife Preservation Society of Australia and was for many years its president.

In 1956 he bought a movie camera and began making documentary films which later led to Australia's first television environment program, Nature Walkabout (1967).^[1]

In 1974 he was awarded the Australian Natural History Medallion. In 1976 he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia.^[2]

In 1985 Vincent Serventy assisted the Conservation Council of Western Australia in its unsuccessful campaign to stop a major road being built through the Trigg Regional Open Space. This public land had been identified by the System 6 Study Report to the Environmental Protection Authority as having important conservation value with the bushland extending from the sea to tuart and banksia woodland, a rarity in the metropolitan area. Vincent spoke publicly of the importance of this land for its vegetation, landforms and habitat for local fauna and migratory birds.

Vincent Serventy was a younger brother of the Australian ornithologist Dom Serventy.

Serventy wrote numerous articles on natural history and conservation. Some of his books are:

• The Archipelago of the Recherche. Part 2: Birds (AGS Report No.1. Australian Geographical Society: Melbourne, 1952)
• The Australian Nature Trail (Georgian House: Melbourne, 1965)
• A Continent in Danger (Survival Books. A Survival Special. Andre Deutsch: London, 1966)
• Nature Walkabout (Reed: Artarmon, 1969)
• Southern Walkabout (Reed: Artarmon, 1969)
• Around the Bush with Vincent Serventy (ABC: Sydney, 1970)
• Dryandra. The story of an Australian forest (Reed: Sydney, 1970)
• The Handbook of Australian Sea-birds (Reed: Sydney, 1971) (with Dominic Serventy and John Warham)
• Australia’s World Heritage Sites (1985)
• The Desert Sea. The Miracle of Lake Eyre in Flood (Macmillan Australia: Melbourne, 1985)
• Flight of the Shearwater (Kangaroo Press: Kenthurst, 1996)
• An Australian Life. Memoirs of a naturalist, conservationist, traveller and writer (Fremantle Arts Centre Press: South Fremantle, 1999)

• Robin, Libby. (2001). The Flight of the Emu: a hundred years of Australian ornithology 1901-2001. Carlton, Vic. Melbourne University Press. ISBN 0-522-84987-3
• Serventy, Vincent N. (1999). An Australian Life. Memoirs of a naturalist, conservationist, traveller and writer. Fremantle Arts Centre Press: South Fremantle. ISBN 1-86368-232-5
• Stephens, Tony (2007). "Green before it was fashionable: Vincent Serventy, 1916-2007" in The Sydney Morning Herald, 2007-09-12, p. 20 [1]

• http://www.wpsa.org.au/pdf/news/VincentServenty.pdf