About me

Welcome to my website! 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, and was its executive director for almost 30 years. During that time it became the leading organisation working to restore the Caledonian Forest in Scotland and took on ownership of the 10,000 acre Dundreggan Estate in Glenmoriston as its flagship project for native woodland recovery.

Through my work with Trees for Life, I’ve helped to provide the inspiration for other ecological restoration projects in the Scottish Borders, on Dartmoor in England and for the creation of the Yendegaia National Park in Tierra del Fuego, Chile. I also founded the Restoring the Earth project, to promote the restoration of the planet’s degraded ecosystems as the most important task for humanity in the 21st century.

I regularly contribute articles to various professional and popular publications, and am active on Twitter and LinkedIn, as well as writing my own blogs. My natural history photographs have appeared in publications such as Time magazine and Encyclopedia Britannica, and I’m currently working on a high quality photographic book project about the Araucaria (monkey puzzle tree) forests of Chile.

I’ve given lectures at events and conferences in more than 20 countries worldwide, and have received a number of awards for my work, including the Schumacher Award in 2001, the Spirit of Scotland Environment Award in 2012 and the RSPB Nature of Scotland Outstanding Contribution Award in 2013, whilst Trees for Life was recognised as the UK Conservation Project of the Year in 1991.

Over a period of many years I have been filmed regularly for television programmes and have been featured in radio interviews, both in Scotland and as far afield as Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of Argentina. I speak with clarity and confidence in public settings, and am able to communicate my passion and inspiration for the natural world and its restoration.

I am a trustee of several charities, including Wild things!, an environmental education charity that grew out of Trees for Life; the Findhorn Hinterland Trust, which promotes conservation and education on the wild land surrounding the Findhorn Community; and Trees for Hope, which works to restore the degraded lands of the Fertile Crescent area. I am also a Patron of Moor Trees, which is working to restore native woodland on Dartmoor in the southwest of England.

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. I also seek to embody my values and care for the Earth in my own personal life. To this end, I’ve been vegan for almost 40 years and live in an energy-efficient ecologically designed house in the Findhorn Community in northeast Scotland, where the ecological footprint of our lives is one of the lowest in the UK.