WLT Council

A Suffolk-based writer on wildlife who also covers other subjects, most notably sport, and has published three novels. Writes Wild Notebook, a weekly column on The Times comment pages, and has written a number of books on wildlife, including How To Be A Bad birdwatcher and more recently, My Natural History. He is a member of Green Ink, assigning his Public Lending Rights to the World Land Trust.

Mark is a zoologist, an active and outspoken conservationist, an award-winning writer, a TV and radio presenter, a widely published photographer, a magazine columnist and a conservation consultant. He co-presented the six-part BBC2 television series Last Chance to See, with Stephen Fry, in which the unlikely duo travelled the world in search of endangered species (autumn 2009), and BBC2’s The Museum of Life (spring 2010). For many years he presented the weekly half-hour radio programme Nature, on BBC Radio 4. He has written more than 50 books (including several bestsellers) and has been Chairman of the Judging Panel of the prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition since 2005. A co-founder of WLT’s Green Ink project.

Is Honorary Director of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, which operates one of the world’s foremost centres for breeding endangered species and training conservation professionals at its headquarters in Jersey, as well as 50 conservation projects in 14 countries. Together with her late husband, Gerald Durrell, she launched the Programme for Belize, which became the World Land Trust, in London in 1990.  The World Land Trust congratulates Dr Lee Durrell, on being awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in June 2011.

Alistair Gammell’s involvement in the conservation works spans four decades. Much of this time was spent working for the RSPB, particularly in international conservation issues and prior to his retirement he was RSPB’s Director of International Issues. He has been a leading figure in international convention drafting. Since 2009 Alistair has been the director of the Pew Environment Group’s Chagos campaign, which resulted in the declaration of the world's largest marine reserve (544,000 km sq).  He is now working on marine protection is a number of other UK Overseas Territories.

Merloyd is an editor and publisher whose imprint, Merloyd Lawrence Books, co-publishes books on nature/environment, psychology, and biography with the Perseus Book Group. These include Living Downstream, on cancer and the environment by Sandra Steingraber, and works by the Swedish photographer/scientist Lennart Nilsson. She serves on several boards of conservation organizations including the Woods Hole Research Center, Northeast Wilderness Trust, and Island Press.

Richard Porter, who lives in North Norfolk, worked for the RSPB for many years. Currently he advises BirdLife International on their Middle East programme, specialising in Yemen and Socotra. He is also adviser to Nature Iraq on its conservation projects and trains and directs their staff for their Key Biodiversity Area surveys. He is author of Birds of the Middle East.

After graduating in Ecology, Elaine worked for the publisher Editions Alecto Ltd on major international projects including Banks’ Florilegium, Audubon’s Birds of America and Domesday Book.  She later moved to IUCN to be its Head of Publishing and then became Head of Development for the Linnean Society of London (2006-9), where she was awarded the Tercentenary Medal. During 2010/early 2011 Elaine worked with the WLT as Co-ordinator for its RHS Chelsea Flower Show exhibit which was awarded a RHS Gold Medal and prize for the Best in Section. She has undertaken other consultancies with WLT and now runs  an independent consultancy in Cambridge. Elaine is a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, a member of the IUCN Commission on Education and Communication, and a Co-opted Member of Council for Society for the history of Natural History.

During 30 years as a private practice general surgeon in Massachusetts, Nancy was president of her medical staff and then president of the county medical society. Since retiring in 2007 she has continued to practice medicine part-time on a volunteer basis. She has been involved with both The Nature Conservancy (Massachusetts, USA chapter) and the Massachusetts Audubon Society and was an active member of the MassAudubon board for 11 years eventually serving as chair of the conservation committee. During that time she gave a 160 acre parcel to MassAudubon bought expressly to preserve its varied habitat and active beaver ponds. She is now an honorary director and has volunteered with the land protection staff helping them monitor conservation restrictions, among other things. Nancy cooperated with TNC on a land protection project, buying 275 acres of land with a 25 acre pond. As part of her continuing commitment to helping birds Nancy currently serves on the board of the American Bird Conservancy.