Plantlife International
Board of Trustees
Chairman - Prof Roger Crofts CBE
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Roger Crofts has spent most of his working life in Scotland as a research worker, as a Government advisor and administrator and, from 1991 to 2002 as Chief Executive of Scottish Natural Heritage.
Now Roger is an advisor to NGOs governments and government agencies around Europe on the care of their special places and getting people involved.
He is also active in environmental and heritage charities, and in promoting understanding of nature through writing and lecturing.
On a trip to Svalbard decades ago, Roger was first captivated by plants growing in the wild. In many visits to wild places since then he has captured wild flowers through the camera lens and the photographs now festoon the walls of his home in Edinburgh and take pride of place in his public presentations.
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Frances Watkins read mathematics at Newcastle University. She has worked in software development, as a mathematics teacher and as a full-time mother.
Frances has always been interested in plants and has been a keen field botanist since the age of 12. She is a member of the Ashmolean Natural History Society of Oxfordshire and served as its president for three years and is now a Vice-president, a member of the editorial board of its journal Fritillary, and chairman of its Education Group. Frances is also an active member of the Society’s Rare Plants Group, editing its newsletter, helping with the conservation of rare plants and the current work to compile a Rare Plants Register for Oxfordshire. She also does botanical survey work.
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Vivien Langford completed her degree in Economics and Statistics at Exeter University before qualifying as a Chartered Accountant in 1986. Since then Vivien has developed her professional career in financial management with particular expertise in the PR and Communications sector.
She is currently Finance Director and Company Secretary for The Argyll Consultancies PLC and is Chief Operating Officer for its largest division Kaizo.
Vivien has always enjoyed getting out into the countryside for walks and holidays and is keen to support the work of Plantlife to 'keep the colour in the countryside'. Vivien is pleased to have this opportunity to provide her business and financial skills to Plantlife at a time when the charity faces increasing amounts of regulation and legislation. Her experience will be particularly valuable with the imminent introduction of the new Charities and Companies Acts.
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Peter Ainsworth was elected Member of Parliament for East Surrey in April 1992, May 1997 and again in June 2001. He was a member of the Select Committee on the Environment 1993 – 4; has been a member of the Public Service Committee and was joint Secretary of the All Party Conservation Group.
In 1994 he was named Campaigning MP of the year by Green Magazine and in 1995 named Country Life Magazine's Country MP of the Year. Between 1994 and 1996 he was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Ministers in the Treasury and Department of National Heritage. In July 1996 he was appointed an Assistant Government Whip.
Following William Hague's election as Leader of the Conservative Party he became Opposition Deputy Chief Whip and from June 1998 until September 2001 he was Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. Following Iain Duncan Smith's election as Leader of the Conservative Party he was promoted to Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs from which he resigned in June 2002.
In January 2003 he was appointed to the Environmental Audit Committee and became its Chairman on 17th July 2003.
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Christopher has worked in PR, marketing and communications for 25 years. He previously worked as a journalist.
He founded corporate and consumer public relations consultancy Barclay Stratton, where he is a non-executive director and is also non-executive chairman of PR and representation firm The Brighter Group . He has worked for multinational corporate clients, NGOs, governments and charities and his areas of expertise include crisis and issue management, CSR, public affairs, corporate PR, communications strategy and the environment.
Christopher's interest in the environment stems from his experience developing and managing what is now a 20 hectare conservation area at his home near Rye in East Sussex. He has spent ten years reverting the area to traditional and sustainable land management methods, and it is now a mixed landscape of wildflower meadows, hedged green lanes, boggy woodland, ponds, water-courses, reed beds and a hill top chestnut and oak coppice wood. It is increasingly open to the public and used by conservation groups for training and demonstration purposes.
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James Cadbury was on the staff of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) from 1969–2000, first as Head of Research and then as Senior Ecologist. He continues to work on a contract basis with the Society. As a member of the Reserves Ecology team, he was involved in providing scientific advice for the management of RSPB reserves. From 1987-1998, James was editor of RSPB Conservation Review.
As an active field botanist, he has contributed to the recording of the flora of Cambridgeshire, the Norfolk Broads, Tiree, Shetland, and particularly RSPB reserves throughout the UK. James has an extensive knowledge of the vascular plant flora in Europe and the Seychelles. For several years, James was a member of the Council of the Botanical Society of the British Isles.
He is a vice-president of the Cambridgeshire Bird Club and a member of the English Nature Management Committee for Wood Welton Fen, the National Trust Local Management Committee for Wicken Fen and the Devon Wildlife Trust Management Committee for Welcombe and Marsland reserves. He is a Trustee of the Kingfishers Bridge Wetland Creation Trust (Cambridgeshire). In the Seychelles, he is Chairman of the Island Conservation Society's Scientific Committee for Aride Island.
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Anne’s interest in natural history dates from her childhood and was kindled by her mother, whose own interest and enthusiasm for wildlife was infectious.
She qualified as a social worker in 1974 and worked in social services departments for 15 years, firstly with children and families, and, later, as a training officer – a job which she discovered she loved.
Anne joined the staff of RSPB in 1989 as training officer, and was responsible for developing and delivering an extensive range of in-house training courses. Six years later, she was appointed as Head of Education at RSPB, responsible for the Society’s teaching materials, field teaching programme and education policy. As a member of the Government’s Education for Sustainable Development Panel, she lobbied successfully for sustainable development to be included in the National Curriculum for England.
In 2001, Anne became Director of Human Resources at RSPB, a post she still holds. Her responsibilities include employment policies and practices, training and development, Health and Safety, environmental management and facilities management.
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Philip Mould has expressed an amateur enthusiasm for wild plants since early childhood, and this has developed into an ardent desire to ensure their conservation in recent years. His business interests and professional experience in communication are one of the emphases he brings to Plantlife International as its Chairman. He is one of the country's foremost authorities on British and American portraiture, and has a West End gallery specialising in the subject. He has been a valuer for the Heritage Lottery Fund since 1998 and has been official art advisor to the House of Commons and to the House of Lords since 1988.
Philip has published on art-related subjects and is the author of Sleepers: In Search of Lost Old Masters (published in paperback as The Trail of Lot 163 by 4th Estate, London). He is also a regular broadcaster, reviewer and writer for the national press. His television work includes writing and presenting the Channel 4 series: Changing Faces, and co-presenting BBC2's popular prime-time programme on collecting: The Antiques Show.
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Dr Parker has worked for the Countryside Council for Wales (CCW )for nine years following a long career as an Environmental Consultant in the private sector. As CCW's Chief Scientist he is responsible for CCW's biodiversity policy and taking forward CCW's work with both designated sites and in the wider countryside. CCW is a Government organisation whose statutory role is the stewardship of the wildlife and landscapes of Wales.
Dr Parker has a life-long interest in plants and natural history in general. He joined Plantlife as a Founder and Life Member at the outset and has followed the development of the organisation with great interest. He joined the BSBI in the 1970s and studied dactyloid saxifrages for his PhD. He is currently Chair of the National Wildflower Centre in Liverpool where he has been on the Board since its foundation in 1999. He is on the Board of the National Biodiversity Network (NBN) Trust (from 1998) and has a particular interest in the sharing of data on the distribution of wildlife. He has been involved in the foundation and building of the Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (IEEM), and was President from 1998-2000. He also finds time to be a field naturalist and has been a WeBS (Wetland Bird Survey) recorder on the Dee Estuary for almost 30 years.
Whilst working for CCW, he has helped to develop an active CCW/Plantlife partnership which has led to the appointment of a Welsh Officer (Trevor Dines) and Lower Plant Development Officer (Ray Woods) for Plantlife, as well as programme funding for these posts.
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Dilys Roe has worked for the International Institute for Environmennt and Development (IIED) – a sustainable development policy research institute based in London – since 1992. She is currently a Senior Researcher in IIED’s Natural Resources Group, specialising in biodiversity. Her work focuses on exploring the links between biodiversity conservation and poor people’s livelihoods and informing policy in this field. Specific activities currently include co-ordinating an international ‘Learning Group’ on poverty-conservation linkages, working with international conservation NGOs to explore the development of a human rights charter to guide practice in developing countries – particularly with respect to displacement from protected areas - and reviewing the impacts and achievements of community based wildlife management in Africa.
Dilys also acts as an external advisor on biodiversity to the UK Department for International Development. In other roles, Dilys has undertaken work for the Foreign Office on the implementation of the Environment Charters in the UK’s Overseas Territories, and worked with ODI and the International Centre for Responsible Tourism on pro-poor tourism.
Dilys Roe read Rural Environmental Sciences at the University of London and followed her BSc with an MSc in Environmental Management, also at the University of London. She is currently completing a PhD at the Durrell Institute for Conservation and Ecology at the University of Kent.
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Dr Jan-Willem Sneep is a biologist and studied biology at the University of Utrecht, in particular the flora of Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles. Before university, he was a biology teacher at a High School for 16-19 year olds for six years.
Since 1980 Jan-Willem has worked at the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality in the Hague and managed several functions in the field of national and international nature policy.
In the 1990s Jan-Willem developed a number of species policies in the Netherlands (for example, Species Policy Plans for Badger, Otter, Butterflies, Wall vegetation etc.). Since 1990 he has been involved with international nature policy. Jan-Willem was the Dutch representative at many international Conventions and Agreements such as the Bern Convention (Council of Europe), Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), Convention on the Conservation of Migratory species (CMS/Bonn Convention), African-Eurasian Waterbird Agreement (AEWA), Agreement on the Conservation of Populations of European Bats (EUROBATS), Agreement on the Conservation of Small Cetaceans of the Baltic and North Seas (ASCOBANS).
In 1994 he received the (first) Golden Butterfly Award.
Until July 2005, Jan-Willem was Head of the International Division of the Department for Nature of the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality. He developed the International Policy Programme for Biodiversity of the Netherlands 2002-2006 and also organised several international conferences in the field of nature conservation and sustainable biodiversity. Jan-Willem's earliest involvement with Planta Europa was at the first Planta Europa Conference in Hyeres, France in 1995. He facilitated the development of the identification of Important Plant Areas in Europe. Since 2004 Jan-Willem has been Chair of Planta Europa and Chair of the Steering Committee.
Jan-Willem is also Chair of the Committee of Experts for the development of the Pan-European Ecological Network (PEEN) of the Council of Europe. At present he is director of the Dutch National Parks Foundation, which was founded on 15 November 2005.
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Plantlife's
Board of Trustees
Peter Ainsworth
Christopher Broadbent
Dr James Cadbury
Prof Roger Crofts
Anne Harley
Vivien Langford
Philip Mould
Dr David Parker
Dilys Roe
Jan-Willem Sneep
Frances Watkins