Derek Ratcliffe
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Derek Almey Ratcliffe (9 July 1929 – 23 May 2005) was one of the most significant British nature conservationists of the 20th century. He was Chief Scientist for the Nature Conservancy Council, retiring in 1989. Ratcliffe was the author of the 1977 Nature Conservation Review, a document which set out the most important sites for nature conservation in the United Kingdom.
Among other major achievements:
- Ratcliffe was the first person to discover the link between the use by farmers of pesticides such as DDT and Dieldrin and the decline of British populations of birds of prey, in particular the Peregrine Falcon (a species on which he was a world authority).
- He was instrumental in persuading the UK government to end the tax advantages available for planting of non-native conifer forests on Scottish peat bogs, which was threatening the internationally important large wetland area of Caithness and Sutherland known as the Flow Country.
Ratcliffe studied for a Ph.D at University of Wales, Bangor.
[edit] Publications
Derek Ratcliffe's most important publications included:
- Plant Communities of the Scottish Highlands (1962, with Donald McVean)
- A Nature Conservation Review (1977)
- The Peregrine Falcon (Poyser, 1980; expanded second edition 1993)
- Bird Life of Mountain and Upland (Cambridge University Press, 1991)
- The Raven (Poyser, 1997)
- In Search of Nature (Broadfield, 2000)
- Lakeland (Collins New Naturalist, 2002)
- Lapland: a natural history (Poyser, 2005)
- Galloway and the Borders (Collins New Naturalist, 2007. Completed a few days before his death in 2005)
[edit] External links
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