Confessions of a contract worker: Sue Everett

1978-79: NCC South Region, Foxhold House, Near Newbury

1982-85: NCC Huntingdon/Peterborough (East Midlands Region and Chief Scientist’s Team)

1985-88: NCC - Chief Scientist’s Team - based at Foxhold House again

As a geography graduate, my ecology knowledge was pretty basic but this job and the subsequent contracts I was employed to do meant that I rubbed shoulders with people who were good birders, botanists and ecologists. I was hungry for knowledge and became an ecological parasite! At university, one of my lecturers was Professor David Shimwell, an internationally renowned botanist. The module he presented (Landscape Ecology and Management) was a great introduction to conservation and SSSIs, including tensions over upland land-use management (grouse v sheep) and the shocking reality of the impact of industrial pollution on the nearby Peak District. The mother of my then partner (Jim) lived in what used to be a ‘mill’ village called Ramsbottom. She told me that before the Clean Air Act (1956), the tops of the surrounding hills could only be seen for the two weeks’ August holiday when the mills were shut down. No wonder Sphagnum had become extinct.

The dark peak on the edge of Bury and Rochdale was a pretty bleak place, with mile upon mile of degraded and eroded peat - some gullies were well over three metres deep and many more metres wide. I recall one walk beside an old quarry filled with old tyres. In 1976, there were fires and the peat smouldered for months. There was still industrial pollution too. The transparent paper factory in Bury stank out the town and spewed sulphurous fumes across the area. A salutary welcome to ecological Armageddon. Incidentally, 42 years later, I made contact with Jim (now a retired blacksmith and still living up north) and last year he drew a design for a stork nesting tower for a project being developed on a local Dorset farm where I had been working.

Unfortunately, David Shimwell’s attendance rate for lectures was only 70%, so a lot of work for that course had to be self-researched. Much time was spent in the university library that was well-stocked with interesting literature, which I devoured. The module on soil science would prove equally useful to my future career and introduced me to the ecology of the New Forest (my undergraduate thesis was on the subject of heathland burning and ecology); a major project of the course was carrying out detailed soil surveys and mapping of the area. For a week in the summer of 1977, we braved the spam and rice at the local youth hostel in Burley, digging soil pits and describing what we found while desperately searching out fish and chip shops in Ringwood. That was also my first introduction to Colin and Jenni Tubbs who ran the NCC Lyndhurst office. 
From university, I started my career as an Assistant Scientific Officer at the Central Water Planning and Water Data Unit then based in Reading. At that time, water voles were so plentiful they would scurry out of the way as I walked on the footbridge across the river. How times change. Infamously, the CWPU was the first quango that Maggie Thatcher scrapped in 1979. During the late 1970s, I also became a volunteer with the Berkshire Conservation Volunteers which proved invaluable in both learning and progressing a career in ecology and countryside management. BEC, unlike most conservation volunteer groups nowadays, was all young people in their 20s and the beginning of ‘networking’, as well as getting hands-on experience with many different aspects of practical conservation, whether scrub bashing on heathlands (in one instance, I had to point out to volunteers that it was unnecessary to bash dwarf gorse), erecting state-of-the art, stock-proof fencing on downland, and straining posts into chalk rubble. Being involved with BEC indirectly led to my first NCC contract, and eventually a Field Officer job with the Gloucestershire Trust for Nature Conservation. Nowadays, it seems the conservation volunteers demographic is still baby boomers - i.e. those twenty-somethings who are now retired. Where are all the young people?

Like many embarking on a conservation career, my early 20s was a sharp learning curve littered with short contracts. In fact, I never had a ‘proper’ job until the Nature Conservation Bureau was set up in 1988, although in 1985 I turned down a job offer as ARO in Glasgow - a decision which I did not regret. It was while working at CWPU that I was introduced to Dick Hornby and, at the tail end of 1978, ended up working on a contract to help write the development plan for NCC's South region under Dick and Peter Schofield, based at the Newbury office. Lots of us were employed on contract around that time and some are still close friends - they include John Waters, Anita (now Exton), Caroline Peachey (now Steel), Michel and Heather Hughes, and Joanna Martin (now Robertson) who was then ARO for Buckinghamshire. Michel, originally a social worker but already a good self-taught field ecologist with a penchant for snails, progressed a career in conservation, including periods as a voluntary warden for RSPB, eventually becoming Devon Wildlife Trust’s Conservation Officer, then heading up their environmental consultancy before becoming self-employed.

John Waters went on to mortgage his flat and buy a film camera. He has had an illustrious career in wildlife filming, including for the BBC’s Natural History Unit alongside David Attenborough. Sarah (née Vernon) spent some time working at Ynys Las and then for the Field Studies Council, then met and married Jeremy Thomas. She became a lecturer at Kingston Malward College before retiring - she and Jeremy lived next door to Martin Warren and Dee Stephens while their children grew up. Anita married Adrian Exton (we all originally met when BEC-ing), then went on to work for the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers and Wiltshire County Council. We still meet from time to time as they live in north Dorset.

Dick Hornby and his wife Anne became good friends - they eventually moved to Abu Dhabi but are now back in the Newbury area. At the time, John Bacon and Paul Toynton were also based at Foxhold and we are still in touch, more often via the ‘Nibblers’ forum than in person though. Paul was then warden of Aston Rowant NNR; he subsequently went on to manage Martin Down NNR, then got a job in charge of overseeing conservation on Salisbury Plain. His knowledge of grassland management and conservation is phenomenal. Chief Warden then was Robbie, a delightful man, who is now in his late 90s and lives in Swanage. The late Bob Gibbons was also part of the South Region Team, working as Hampshire ARO. Lastly, Paul Goriup, my former partner, was another contractor, working on botanical surveys of UK rivers under the guidance of the late Nigel Holmes, whom we would meet again when moving to Cambridgeshire. In the early 1980s, Paul was hands-on with the first phase of the Great Bustard reintroduction to Salisbury Plain working for the Great Bustard Trust, then moved to Cambridge as a project officer for the International Council for Bird Preservation (now Birdlife International) before we set up the Nature Conservation Bureau in 1988. Paul still works in international conservation, and has extensive international experience in Europe and Eurasia; he was also one of the original members of the Knepp Wildland Steering Group (among other things). 

Foxhold House was pretty packed with people as NCC’s Geological Conservation Review Team was also based there, headed by George Black (who did not mingle). Among his minions was Keith Duff, who eventually ended up as English Nature’s Chief Scientist. In the Foxhold days, I have it on good authority that he used to staple up the hems of his jeans. But then I guess a lot of blokes did that at the time. Nowadays, they probably do away with hems altogether, the ripped look being in and all that.

Most 49-ers will remember the Dark Times of 1979 when NCC's budget got eviscerated after Maggie Thatcher became Prime Minister. I remember writing to my MP about it and then got interviewed by Peter Schofield (Regional Officer) because the MP had contacted him and dobbed me in! Confidentiality between elected members and constituents was not a thing at that time obviously. NCC contracts (even use of the pool cars) came to a juddering halt, but other short contracts followed with the wildlife trust, including orchid wardening and working on a habitat survey of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, the latter under a Manpower Services Commission initiative, which was a type of apprenticeship and enabled many of us to gain a foothold in the sector. It would be great to have something like that again to help young ecologists just out of university. Graham Bellamy headed up the wildlife trust survey team - he was still writing up his PhD on grayling but did eventually finish it. Graham ended up working for NCC (or was it English Nature?) as an NNR warden/site manager in Bedfordshire.

After a couple of years working for the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust as a Field Officer, I reluctantly relocated to Cambridgeshire as Paul’s job was there. I was already aware the county was a wildlife desert and it didn't disappoint. My first contract was for the NCC East Midlands Region working under Jenny Heap, surveying and writing citations for notifying SSSIs under the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act. That job was based at Godwin House in Huntingdon. It was a huge privilege to work with or alongside so many amazing ecologists, including those in the Chief Scientist’s team and Derek Ratcliffe himself. The cosy and informal places at Foxhold and Godwin House where we met for tea and lunch breaks (boil the kettle, make toast, heat up your pot noodle in the microwave) made for sociability, creating friendships and mentoring at their best. The eventual move to Northminster House changed those demographics substantially, although there was a staff restaurant of sorts and a bar (and we know who propped that up!) Now, in 2024, I cannot begin to grasp the effects of hot-desking and the move to largely online meetings on both inexperienced and experienced agency staff. It can’t be good for forging those important friendships, team working, mentoring or mental wellbeing.

As a touch typist, I was unique (other than George Peterken, who also had a typewriter that he used in his office) typing my own reports and cutting out the typing pool. For those who may be in the post-boomer generation categories and will not have a clue what a typing pool is (generation X etc), the usual way of doing things was to talk into a dictation machine (if you were a senior manager), or write your report and letters out by hand. These would then be put into a buff envelope, picked up by an office assistant and sent to the typing pool before being returned several days later in another buff envelope, along with the typed script. Computers have no doubt at least doubled the efficiency of letter and report writing, compared to the old ways of using a typist employed to do nothing else. The woman who headed up the typing pool at Northminster House was Marina Palmer, who was a fire-eater in her spare time. Typing was a proper job then, employing lots of people (nearly all women) and I did a lot of it as holiday jobs before I embarked on my conservation career - even working on secret stuff for a military contractor. One temporary placement was working on Project X which involved typing out complex equations. I later found out this was for building nuclear weapons. Hope I didn’t get them wrong!

More lifelong friends were made while working at Godwin House, including Mark July, Rosemary Parslow, Jon Spencer and Sarah Fowler - the latter whom I now consider part of my extended family. We have seen each other through many of life’s ups and downs, weddings, births, divorces and deaths. Andy Clements and Jeanette Plumridge were also based there. Andy was also on contract and, with Steve Berry’s support, we pushed for changes to conditions for people like us employed on short-term contracts. At the time, contractors would be given a weekend gap between contracts, then re-employed, with no benefits such as a pension, which permanent employees had, even if we had been on contracts for over two years. At the time, there was a shortage of field staff in some areas to survey land for SSSI notification and we were sent for short trips to Lincolnshire and Dumfries/Galloway to help with the surveys. Being of short stature, and Andy being over six foot, keeping up with him was quite a challenge when striding up the side of adder-strewn hillsides! Andy went on to head up the BTO. For the Lincolnshire coast surveys, I buddied up with Rosemary. These were the days of relying on aerial photographs. The ones in our possession did not show the military installation and the red-and-white striped rockets pointing out to sea! Mark July and I became firm friends, even doing stuff for a local group called the Huntingdon Greens. We also wrote a paper together on woodland management in ECOS. 

By the early 1980s, I had become quite political with a small ‘p’, having become involved in the British Association of Nature Conservationists and subsequently became its Chair - Duncan Poore (a former NC Director) was President at the time. There were huge challenges to nature, e.g. habitat destruction from farming, straw burning and the destruction of the Flow Country from conifer afforestation to name but a few. In the early 1980s, Cambridgeshire was like many other counties in England and Wales, where any decent size semi-natural woodland had been and was still a target of destructive forestry practices funded or carried out by the Forestry Commission. At one point, after work hours, I would look in the filing cabinets, searching for file notes that recorded meetings and correspondence with the Forestry Commission. It was soul-destroying reading the pleas (begging) of NCC staff trying to halt the FC’s blitzkrieging of ancient semi-natural woods going back to the 1960s and 1970s. BANC had commissioned a seminal report called The Future for Forestry and we aimed to dish the dirt on all and sundry to put the kibosh on environmentally-damaging Government forestry subsidies. At the time, I also had a meeting in Northminster House with Derek Ratcliffe and the then NCC Chair, Sir William Wilkinson, who were working a pincer attack with politicians and officials to scrap the subsidies, while George Peterken was also negotiating the issue with FC officers in terms of changing FC policy. That was a success story but NCC eventually paid the price. When he became Environment Secretary (1986-89), Nicholas Ridley began the process of breaking up the organisation. That marked the beginning of devolution (something that would have happened anyway). Ridley wasn’t popular with conservationists and an effigy of him was unceremoniously burnt at the stake when it looked like he was going to green-light a major housing development at Bramshill in Hampshire. Andy Byfield, who was the local officer in Hampshire at the time, might have had some intelligence on that. 

The juggernaut of Germanic plantation forestry practice was hard to turn around, but in the 1980s and 1990s it did happen thanks to people like George, Keith Kirby and local NCC staff (including Jenny and Mark) who kept pushing, commenting on draft strategies and influencing. Jon Spencer, of course, went on to do much more as the FC’s first ecologist - initially leading the way towards better management of New Forest woods, then getting in place policies on the restoration of replanted ancient semi-natural woods and open habitats as the head environmental honcho for the FC.

After the SSSI survey finished, other contracts followed, including a field survey of Cambridgeshire’s ancient woods, a field survey of the Ouse and Nene Washes, work on the Ancient Woodland Inventory and a review of habitat change under George Peterken. My Cambridgeshire ancient woodland report was commented on by Oliver Rackham, who did not believe I had seen coppiced ash trees that had toppled over because they had become so top heavy. He did make some grammatical improvements. The county-wide woodland survey was an amazing learning experience. Among other things, I got to know the ‘jizz’ of ground conditions that Herb Paris preferred - just one little detail that most ecologists wouldn’t know unless they’d been there and got the badge. One woodland visited (Mustoe Wood) was owned by the local MP and was in the process of being bulldozed to make way for plantation forestry. Jenny intervened by chatting him up and I think got it stopped. I took some decent photos of the “dozer” among the toppled hazels and bluebells - these were subsequently used by the Countryside Commission in one of their reports about countryside change. Most of the woods were used as shoots, some with straw strewn on rides, piles of dead (poisoned I assume) chickens and gibbets full of dead things. It was hardly surprising buzzards had gone from East Anglia and were slow to return.

Another aspect of fieldwork at that time is that we usually worked alone, with no means of communication. Elf and Safety was not yet the thing and mobile phones were something used by Captain Kirk and the Star Trek crew. Us lone-working fieldworkers were fearless. Risk assessments didn’t exist, nor was there a buddy system, although if the pool car didn’t turn up the next day, no doubt questions would have been asked. I did come unstuck a couple of times – once grounding the NCC Astra on a track on the top of one of the banks that hemmed in the Ouse Washes. But my luck was in - the resident mole catcher towed me out of my predicament. I also told him I’d seen a Coypu - which he went off to dispatch - the species was finally eradicated later in the 1980s. Another time, I was kerb crawled by a toothless farmhand on a tractor - fortunately he was on the other side of a deep ditch.

I paired up with Rosemary a couple of times. One fine morning did not start out well. We parked up and got to a bridge over the River Nene (which is, in fact, a wide, trapezoidal drain). Clipboards primed, we were ready to split up to survey different fields when Rosemary became quite demonstrative, no doubt gazing at the view, and forgot she was still holding her clipboard as she flung her hand in the air. The clipboard was instantly airborne and floated off down the river. On another occasion, we were tasked to survey the largest woodland in the area - Bedford Purlieus. After greeting some forest workers on our way to our starting point in the northern section of the wood, we split up, agreeing to meet up at a rendezvous point half-way into the wood at a ride intersection. Somehow, we missed each other and eventually met back at the car park in late afternoon. During that time, the forest workers had their chainsaws nicked (from in the middle of the wood - we had seen no one else) and Rosemary had been spooked by a strange guy who seemed to have followed her, then kept hiding behind trees. When she eventually got to the car park, a police car drove in, the policemen jumped the guy and drove off with him. Rosemary is still alive and well and living in Cornwall. As many will know, she went on to bigger and better things, including writing a New Naturalist on the Scilly Isles and is still a BSBI recorder for the Scillies. In 2023, she was awarded The Christopher Cadbury Medal by the Wildlife Trusts for her 60-years’ worth of voluntary work on documenting the natural history of the Scillies. 

The habitat change review grew out of George Peterken’s questioning (i.e. cynicism) of FC woodland change statistics, so initially we were examining those, but the job then expanded to collate more evidence of habitat loss across the UK. As the scale of habitat loss was unfolding, various wildlife trusts were collating the statistics - and they were horrifying.

There were a few salutary wildlife ‘emergencies’ that I recall while working at Godwin House. One involved a load of wildfowl found dead in a field in Lincolnshire, poisoned by Aldicarb or something similarly deadly. Another was the frustration over the proposal to farm signal crayfish at Blenheim. The freshwater team knew this would turn out badly, but NCC’s comments were, as usual, ignored by MAFF, the licensing body. MAFF and the NFU were no friends of nature conservation. It was a joyful thing in 2002 when MAFF was finally abolished.

This was also the time of hedges being burned to a cinder. Anyway, who cared if the straw burn ‘cleared out’ the last hedge on the farm? At harvest time, the sky was black with smoke, often with the sun disappearing behind the fug. It was unwise to paint your house at that time as the smuts were everywhere. I sent some, anonymously, in an envelope to the local NFU office in Huntingdon. Someone from the Scottish Executive who had travelled down by train to a conference on International Conventions I had co-organised remarked on how he hadn’t realised how bad it was. Straw burning wasn’t to be banned until ten years later in 1993.

Eventually, the NFU could no longer defend a practice which, apart from countryside destruction, sent smoke billowing over dual carriageways causing car crashes. By then, the fire brigade had joined the push to get it banned and MPs finally ignored the bleats of the NFU, although it had (backed up by MAFF) been rather successful in delaying the ban. Incidentally, the conference was a BANC one and I had already used ECOS as a vehicle to put the case for an EU directive on habitats and plants. Other background ‘networking’ from Alistair, Ian and Paul, eventually paid off. Stanley Johnson, who was Environment Commissioner, published a draft directive that eventually became the Habitats Directive and three of us (myself, Jane Thornback from WCMC and Malcolm Smith from NCC) had the first draft thumped in front of us at Stanley’s office in Brussels. The rest is history, although not such a happy story now we are no longer part of the EU.

Sadly, Godwin House was closed, as was NCC’s London office - I then had a 28-mile commute to Peterborough (Northminster House) - aka Petrograd. For the first few weeks, I suffered from shortness of breath and panic attacks, diagnosed as new building syndrome associated with glues, chemicals etc used in the finish. An early introduction to building science, something I subsequently revisited in the noughties when studying for a postgraduate degree at the Centre for Alternative Technology. The commute, working from a soulless Petrograd office with views that didn’t inspire, and Cambridgeshire’s trashed countryside were tolerated for a short while, but I was aware my original intention of two years in Cambridgeshire were stretching out to three. After working on the habitat change review, I refused another contract based at Northminster House and went to work as a temporary typist at a Cambridgeshire hospital while applying for other ‘proper’ jobs. I came a close second for a Conservation Officer post at the Shropshire WT, and had an interview for a similar role for the Essex WT. The latter interview was memorable as the interview panel comprised half a dozen middle-aged/elderly men. I was not informed there would be a walk around the reserve and had dressed in smart shoes and a suit. In the absence of changing facilities, I disrobed and changed into scruffs and boots in the car park while they were all waiting for me. Some things have since improved. 

The job (another contract, this time for two years - wow - a contract that would last more than three months!) I finally accepted was back at Foxhold House, lying on the edge of Crookham Common, contiguous with Greenham Common - then home of the US Air Force with the longest runway in Europe - big enough to take the gigantic Galaxy cargo plans. While there, perimeter fences were being reinforced and huge pits dug at intervals around the perimeter, into which tanks for fuel were then installed. Bomb-proof concrete bunkers to house the missiles were constructed and it was assumed they were actually brought in and stored there. Later, in the mid-1990s and after the missiles went, Jon Spencer, while working for English Nature and also being involved with the local LibDems (the party in charge of Newbury District Council), helped to put together a plan to remove and recycle the concrete runways, restore the heath-grassland habitat and the whole common was eventually passed back to the Council. It is still a pretty amazing place full of field mushrooms, ceps and abundant Autumn Ladies’ Tresses, lichen-rich heath, dry heath, pools and alderwoods. However, new housing estates have crept closer and it is increasingly busy with people and dogs. With English Nature’s rationalisation of properties and offices, and as part of Government cash-saving exercises, Foxhold House was eventually sold and returned to use as a private residence. Some of us ex-Foxholders held a reunion when it closed, finishing with a walk on the common. 

The job based at Foxhold was part of the national Rare Plants Project to survey for what were then Red Data vascular plants across the NCC’s South Region under the leadership of Lynne Farrell. Back working at Foxhold, I made other lifelong friends, including Ted Green (who had just been given the ranger job at Windsor Great Park), Peter Marren, Mick Finnemore, Andy Byfield and Sarah Garnett. Dick Hornby was still Deputy Regional Officer but he later left to join the Bureau, a move that marked the beginning of his new career until retirement as environmental scientist based in the Middle-East. Other contractors included Mike Clark (who was carrying out New Forest habitat surveys - he subsequently became CEO of RSPB). Phil Wilson and Ro Fitzgerald were also employed to do rare plant surveys in other regions, so we met up from time to time. I am occasionally in touch with Phil and he is still an active and highly respected ecological consultant who runs a small farm in south-east Devon with his partner Marian. 

The rare plant surveys took me to a wide variety of field sites in search of meadow clary, the downy woundwort, pennyroyal and little robin, to name just a few. A highlight was one summer spent searching for tuberous thistle. I had done my homework on one impressive location for the species documented by Druce that had not been seen for many decades. This took me on an exploration around Great Ridge Wood in Wiltshire and to my delight, I came upon the Druce site - a high quality chalk grassland full of tuberous thistle in flower. It was not an SSSI and still isn’t but was by far and away the best site I saw for the species. On a previous excursion in search of the elusive Druce site, I had taken with me the BSBI recorder, who at the time was waiting for a hip operation. My Renault 4 rattled along the main track before we headed off towards a grassland at the north-east corner. Stupidly, I turned the wheels off the increasingly rutted track onto the downward facing slope, where the car became well and truly stuck. This was about as remote as you could get in this part of Wiltshire. I left Ann sitting on the hillside and set off for the long walk to the nearest road (and telephone box). A few hundred yards along, lo and behold was a posse of young ladies from a local private school out for a pony ride. Having explained my predicament, one dismounted and doubled up behind another. I got into the then vacant saddle and off we cantered to Wylye where I was dropped off by the phone box. I found Bill Elliott’s phone number (warden of Parsonage Down) in the telephone directory and called it. By a stroke of luck, his son answered and within ten minutes had collected me with his pickup, drove us to my car and towed it off the slope. 

Some way into the rare plants contract I had my first child (David) and reduced my hours, with John Norton capably working alongside to complete the contract. My office at Foxhold was shared with Martin Warren, who went on to set up Butterfly Conservation and subsequently became its CEO. Our office was in a small outbuilding, fronting the garden; sometimes I’d stick baby David in the pram while working on a report. 

Paul and I had talked for some time about setting up a consultancy. At that time, there were rather few, and in 1988 we did just that, bringing in Sarah Fowler as a co-director and a designer, Peter Creed, whom we had got to know well. Once the Nature Conservation Bureau was up and running it became my job until leaving in 2000 to become self-employed. The NCB (now Naturebureau) was an amazing place for us all to develop new roles for ourselves and was set up with an ethos of supporting nature conservation initiatives and, in some cases, developing them ourselves. Paul further developed his work overseas, especially in East and Central Europe and we worked on many different contracts for IUCN, including on policy matters and producing publications for them. Sarah was instrumental in founding the IUCN Shark Specialist Group, the European Elasmobranch Society and The Shark Trust and is still ‘sharking’ around the globe, an acknowledged leader in global shark conservation and biology. The Bureau, with Peter Creed’s input, was able to provide a whole package of services, including ecological consultancy, writing, copy-editing and designing through to print for newsletters, technical books and other publications. Many NGOs saw the benefits of working with Peter, including wildlife trusts and RSPB as well as the European Commission. Peter Creed is still MD. He is an amazing naturalist and photographer and, from being a complete computer luddite in 1989, is now an expert in state-of-the-art computer-aided design, producing many complex and impressive publications that in many cases use his own photographs. He is one of the best ‘amateur’ naturalists I know and meshing his two passions and skills - natural history and design - makes him unique. We originally met as he was a close friend of Caroline (née Peachey’s) late husband, David Steel. They worked together back in the mid-1980s to produce a couple of publications about wildlife in Oxfordshire in their own time - the origin of Pisces Publications, the Naturebureau imprint.

One of my early, albeit small, contracts when joining the Bureau was with the umbrella group for plant conservation that had recently been established - the Conservation Association of Botanic Societies. However, it became clear that CABS, despite its good intentions, was a talking shop and that something different was needed to put plant conservation to the fore. A small group of us agreed that we would try to secure a mandate for a national plant conservation NGO and, backed by Richard Mabey and David Bellamy, agreed on a resolution, which I put to a plant conservation conference being organised by the Fauna and Flora Preservation Society. There was overwhelming support and the six of us then progressed setting up Plantlife. Andy Byfield was one of the six, along with Clive Jermy, Jane Smart and Tony Hare. Plantlife is now a major player in the UK NGO sector and is also active internationally. Andy went on to work for Plantlife and is still heavily involved with projects to restore populations of rare plants such as pasque flower, juniper and the unique flora of the Lizard, which he knows so well. Andy now lives in Devon and is a great chum - Sarah and I have spent the last two Christmas’s with him.

In 1997, I was also involved in establishing a second wild plant charity, Flora Locale, along with Miles King, John Akeroyd and Donald MacIntyre. FL focused on promoting good practice in sourcing and using native plants for projects, with a strong emphasis on land manager education and training, and the promotion of UK-sourced grown seed and plants. One of the first things I did, with help from a young intern employed by the NCB, was to create a website for FL - at that time, English Nature, RSPB and other NGOs did not have one. The fact that we did was down to the technological skills and knowledge held at the NCB. Paul was particularly tech-savvy and when we first got home computers this enabled me to be the first person at Foxhold House to use the first computer delivered there (around 1987). All my rare plant data were entered into an early type of database, enabling print-outs of all the species, their location and other basic details.

The work with FL put me in the front line, working with people on habitat creation and restoration, with species-rich grassland creation becoming a particular passion. I knew that there just wasn’t enough seed to go around and in 2003 bit the bullet and bought a brush harvester from Geoff Eyre, an agricultural contractor from Derbyshire who had adapted a Logic paddock sweeper to harvest heather seed. Geoff has done some amazing work restoring heather moorland and, after I had quizzed him on whether the machine could work on wildflower meadows, put in my order.

Charles Flower also wanted to harvest wildflower seed, so we had the two machines delivered and that year began commercial seed harvesting. Thanks to a funded initiative via the then Rural Development Service, I began harvesting seed in meadows on the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire border, as well as from a Cotswold limestone grassland. The owners of that grassland had got in touch after I had written an article in a magazine. This seed was used, along with that purchased from Emorsgate, and in 2004 from Salisbury Plain, on my first and largest grassland creation scheme in the Berkshire Downs.

In all, 50 hectares were completed as part of a Higher Level Stewardship project, which had full English Nature backing (thanks to the brilliant Des Sussex - now conservation manager at Windsor Great Park) and the seed was fully grant-aided. The farm had been mixed before we joined the EEC, after which the last grasslands were ploughed and the farm, apart from a few small paddocks, was ploughed. I was engaged to put together the HLS survey and package. The owner, an eccentric racehorse owner, wanted to see old-fashioned downland restored. Most of the created grassland is still there. Fragrant orchids appeared on one of the fields after four years - no doubt originating from seed collected on the Plain.

My seed harvesting enterprise continued for ten years. It was never my main job and was logistically tricky. Barn space had to be found for two months each summer, and harvesting was dependent on consistent, dry weather. The dreadful downpours of 2007/8, thunderstorms following heatwaves in subsequent years, and having to fit in with farmers and the MoD proved increasingly difficult. The good news was that confidence had greatly increased in meadow creation and restoration, something in which Flora Locale had no doubt played a part, along with people like Donald MacIntyre and Charles Flower who had hosted training and demonstration events. Meadow projects proliferated - wildlife trusts bought seed harvesters and more local seed was being collected. I donated my seed harvester to the local wildlife trust in 2013. Eventually, a national meadows project (Magnificent Meadows) got off the ground, spearheaded by Plantlife but it had been many years in the making, having been talked about and planned by the former grassland habitat group in which English Nature had played a major role.

I continued to work as technical adviser to FL until it folded some 20 years later when my colleagues and I no longer had the energy to carry on and our funds and resources were given to CIEEM. Incidentally, in 1991, the Bureau also provided the first secretariat to the Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management, the professional body for ecologists. This was something BANC had pushed for as we became aware there was insufficient respect for ecologists and a need to professionalise the sector. Its formation was supported by RSPB and the British Ecological Society. Early supporters involved in its formation included David Goode, Tony Bradshaw and Barbara Young, then RSPB Chair, who subsequently became Chair of English Nature. The Institute now has Chartered Status. A potted history of its establishment written by David Goode is given in a 2012 issue of In Practice at https://t.co/PK6258sQi4. My role was as its first Development Officer, directly employed by IEEM but based at NCB with Paul as its CEO. That job brought me into contact with a huge number of ecologists across all sectors - the networking that body is able to provide now seems increasingly important as many ecologists and land managers, including those in the statutory sector, are rather isolated and opportunities to meet up and learn from others is vital.

Most of you will know of me from writing the regular Conservation News column in British Wildlife. I began to write the column while working at the Bureau, having been introduced to the owner and editor, Andrew Branson, by Clive Chatters. Clive is another colleague I met long ago while based at NCC South Region. Later, he became Chair of the New Forest National Park Authority and, of course, has written a New Naturalist book on heathlands. Writing Conservation News involved absorbing as much information as possible on what was going on in the conservation world, then condensing it for the column which gave me a unique insight into the sector’s trials and tribulations. In the early years, all the information came from press releases and articles published in national newspapers and magazines. Increasingly, it came in as e-mails, but over the past two decades the internet became an increasingly amazing source that I would mine. There was no shortage of news. Initially, the column was 5,000 words, with six editions a year. This changed in later years to eight editions and 3,500 words. My last column was published just over a year ago. I count myself as more or less properly retired now, although I am still a very active commentator @suesustainable on Twitter (X) and have 3,800 followers - I am now on BlueSky too (same handle). For all the nastiness of social media, I have found that it does depend on who you talk to and what your interests are. For me, it remains a positive experience and a great way to keep in touch with conservation news, to share knowledge and communicate with like-minded folk, particularly leading conservationists and nature-friendly farmers. As you will appreciate, I am a networking animal. I have made many wonderful friends and met many amazing people working in conservation. Much of this network stems from those formative times while working for the NCC. It is great to keep in touch and this year attending the 49 Club reunion provided another opportunity to see former colleagues. See you in 2025, if not before!