With over 800 votes cast, the final rankings were as follows:
- David Attenborough 270 votes
- Peter Scott 211 votes
- Gerald Durrell 111 votes
- Derek Ratcliffe 89 votes
- Norman Moore 55 votes
- Max Nicholson 33 votes
- Jane Goodall 33 votes
- David Lack 28 votes
- Miriam Rothschild 25 votes
- James Fisher 6 votes
- Tony Soper 6 votes
- Richard Southwood 5 votes
So, the BBC probably picked the right person for their list.
Interestingly, there was a late surge of votes for Peter Scott in the last week of the poll as staff in one of the organisations with which he was associated organised a swell of support.
Even more interesting, there was a rush of support for Miriam Rothschild on Saturday night where over a hundred consecutive votes arrived for her taking her total from the mid-20s to 150, and this was repeated on Sunday night. These votes have been excluded from the total above as they were the product of finger-clicking by one person who had found a way through the defences to prevent multiple voting. It is, in a way, flattering that anyone thought it worthwhile to do this.
Tomorrow and Wednesday will feature comments from Tom Oliver and myself on the results of this poll. Thank you again to all of you who voted once in this poll!
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Honourable omissions were:
Dian Fossey – a difficult person by all accounts but how far has the story of the Karisoke gorillas gone? American, but should qualify because BBC Wildlife followed her story.
Joy Adamson – another difficult person but an enormous gift for writing that hit the pages at the right time. Aryan but Born Free launched in to the British market.
George Adamson – poacher turned conservationist and a very honest man if you have ever seen the Sandy Gall profile just before he was murdered. Born in India of British parents and followed Jim Corbett but with better success.
Richard Leakey – African-born and some times controversial but over-saw the burning of Kenya’s ivory seizures.
George Schaller – American-born but influenced so many British researchers in conservation of big cats.
Philip Wayre – an otter writer, almost ignored but should not be so.
My all-time favourite would be Gavin Maxwell – a man with a questionable reputation by today’s standards (according to Douglas Botting) but with an amazing gift for writing. His writing career started after the Second World War but encompassed this time and his travels through the Atlas mountains, his attempts to start a post-war basking shark fishery, his travels through the now-gone marshes around Basra and the beautiful and often tragic way this led to the shores of Sandaig (Camusfearna) and the otters Mijbil & Edal. Without the stories, the IOSF would not exist and no one would visit the most beautiful part of the British Isles (Skye) unless they were climbing or hiking.
My vote would of gone to Fraser Darling – a naturalist and environmentalist who was very forward thinking – also a good author and who wrote Island Years, a fascinating story of remote island living.
Thanks Pete, for introducing Fraser-Darling to the discussion – I’d support him very strongly – though admitting an ‘interest’ in that my Father became a friend of his & drew the frontpiece for Island Farm, a later book. His Wilderness and Plenty Reith lectures is still as worth reading today as it was back then. My understanding is that he is less well known than he should be in the UK because he had very different views to the prevailing ‘single purpose, intensification’ message of both farming & forestry in the UK – he supported reforestation, opposed the FC led 1950s version and ended up spending much of his working life in a more receptive US before being honoured and recognised here in his later years. His thinking certainly influenced me – and I’d like to think he would approve of today’s Forestry Commission (and would probably be chiding the conservation NGOs for not recognising the breadth and depth of the FC achievement !)