About Us
The 'About Us' section of a website is usually about those that constructed the site, or those who work for the company represented by the site. So in effect, this is 'About Me', since it was on a wet and windy day some years ago that I idly sat down with a book about HTML and XHTML text and decided to construct a website. But this page is about 'us', because it also recognises the great many people without whom this website would not exist.
 |
| |
About Me...
Growing up on the northern edge of Oxford in the 1960s and 1970s, I had the benefits of access to wildlife at one end of the street and access to pubs, clubs and nights out (as I got older!) at the other end of the street - a nice mix to grow up with. My interest in widlife came (seemingly!) right from birth - though one had to suppress such interests back then, as caring about wildlife really wasn't cool, and as for flowers!!! As for so many naturalists, it was birds that first captivated me, along with the influence of friends that saw me straying into moths, mammals and all sorts of other wildlife.
Leaving school, I found myself heading into a horticultural career, which ensured that plants joined the ever-growing areas of wildlife interest. In the early 1990s, life dealt me a handy card that ensured that I moved into the world of conservation and the environment. All of my hobby interests and volunteer work melded together to get me involved with a wide variety of survey work for a few years, then in the late 1990s, an opportunity arose to move into professional wildlife tour guiding. This I still do, as well as keeping my hand in with the odd piece of survey work. Writing and editing seems to have become a thing, too, which has seen me involved with work on various regional and national publications, as well as authoring a couple of books on local flora.
About them - A Thank You!
The encouragement, help and support that I have received from a wealth of friends, acquaintancies, botanists and, well, probably ne'er-do-wells, cannot and should not be underestimated, but it is hard to feel that a simple thank you on here is in any way enough. Hopefully, you all know that you are appreciated and without your help, this website would be all the poorer. That said, any mistakes, typos or glaring errors on here are entirely my own and nothing to do with these lovely people.
This list is doubtless not exhaustive, so I apologise for anyone missed out, but names will be added as I remember them, if indeed they're not here already. No priority should be read into the order of names, they should largely be in alphabetical order by last name except, of course, for my wife Megan, who comes first, for being the perfect wife and partner in the field - no-one has ever learnt grasses so thoroughly in such a short space of time!
East Anglia
| Megan Crewe | Jeremy Bartlett | Steve Beal | Adam Bimpson | Richard Carter | Su Delve | Tony Eadson | Bob Ellis | Nick Elsey | Tim Doncaster | Mary Gullam | Carol Hawkins | Janet Higgins | Bob Leaney | Meg Miller | Sean Minns | Jo Parmenter | Holly Percy | Suki Price | Stuart Read | Martin Sanford | Baz Scampion | James Symonds |
UK (Further afield)
| Michael Lacey | Brian Laney | Richard Mabbutt | Byron Machin | Dawn Nelson | Rosemary Parslow | Martin Rand |
Overseas
| Callan Cohen (South Africa) | Yiannis Christofides (Cyprus) | John King (USA) | Christos Kotselis (Greece) | David Koutsogianopoulos (Greece) | Fernando Enrique Navarrete (Spain) | Josh Nemeth (USA) | Rick Radis (USA) | Joe Smith (USA) | Jim Sundberg (Sweden) | Pat Sutton (USA) | Meg Walker (USA) |
