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About me
Welcome to my web site! I am an inspirational public speaker, ecologist, nature photographer and writer based in the Findhorn Community in the northeast of Scotland.
In 1986 I founded the award-winning conservation charity, Trees for Life, which works to restore the Caledonian Forest in the Scottish Highlands.
I care deeply about our planet, and have dedicated my life to protecting its biological diversity and sharing the beauty and wonders of the natural world through my photographs, talks and writing. Read more
My latest blog post
A shieldbug extravaganza, part 2
“I realised that I was watching a major event in the life of this shieldbug, the closest human equivalent of which may be being born from our mother’s womb. Somehow it felt like a great privilege to witness this profound and almost miraculous process of transformation. It’s a useful exercise to imagine what it must feel like to break out of what ha …
Read moreImage of the Week
News
Caledonian Forest Engagement Diary for 2021 now available
Just in time for the festive gift season, I’ve published the 2021 edition of the Caledonian Forest Engagement Diary. This high quality desk diary features a beautiful photograph from the Caledonian Forest in the Highlands of Scotland for every week of the year, with subjects ranging from the trees and landscape scenes to intimate details of flowers, fungi, birds, insects and plants. It provides a compelling portrait throughout the seasons of the interconnected parts that together comprise the native forest of the Highlands.
Each page in the diary also provides plenty of space to write in daily appointments, and it also features a wealth of notable information, including bank holidays, the times of the full and new moons and noted dates such as National Tree Week. Further information and ordering details are here.
Over on Twitter…
"on 21 November, temperatures were 10-12C higher than normal 30 years ago." & "the highest temperature ever known inside the Arctic Circle in June - 38C". This should be major headlines everywhere, but it's been virtually ignored in the mainstream media. https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/arctic-temperatures-november-2020-climate-change-b1761690.html
There's been a few interesting articles about octopuses recently. This one points to a very interesting evolutionary development - a decentralised brain. I suspect many creatures in the world have intelligence & consciousness that we're not aware of. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/24/specieswatch-each-octopus-arm-may-have-a-mind-of-its-own
For anyone who wonders why moving to a plant-based diet makes much more ecological sense than an animal-based diet, this article provides many of the details regarding the mass production of chickens by industrial agricultural methods.https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/25/revealed-uk-supermarket-and-fast-food-chicken-linked-to-brazil-deforestation-soy-soya