A WELL known conservationist lauded by well known naturalist Chris Packham is due to give a talk at Calstock Arts in the New Year.

Dr Mark Avery is a senior conservationist having been RSPB conservation director for 13 years, as well as a former chair of the World Land Trust and co-founder of Wild Justice with Chris Packham and Ruth Tingay.

On Thursday, January 25, Mark will highlight what is wrong with many of the ways the country carries out conservation and what part the state, environmental charities and all of us can do to start putting it right. He will discuss the successes and failure of the past and will draw important lessons for more effective conservation and how we will turnaround the decline in wildlife.

Mark Avery is a son, husband, father and grandfatherand many things, including a senior conservationist with 25 years at the RSPB and 12 years subsequently as an independent campaigner a co-founder of Wild Justice with Ruth Tingay and Chris Packham.

Wild Justice is a campaigning organisation which challenges Government decisions in the court, campaigns for better laws and better polices and gives ordinary people the chance to speak up for UK wildlife. World Land Trust (WLT) is an international conservation charity helping to create nature reserves and provides permananent protection for habitats and wildlife.

Mark describes himself as a ‘not-bad birder’ and a keen but ‘barely adequate’ all-round naturalist and scientist by training with a PhD on bat behaviour (long time ago – 1983), he is an author with a new book out last summer.

Reviews by others in his field have praised the book called ‘Reflections: What wildlife needs and how to provide it’

Chris Packham said: ‘If I were ‘king for a day’, Avery would be instantly installed as the benign dictator of conservation in the UK. If you love wildlife, read this, think about this, and act upon this.’

Stephen Moss (naturalist and original producer of Springwatch): ‘A timely, brutally honest, yet inspiring account on what has gone wrong with wildlife conservation, and how we can put it right.’

Ian Newton (ornithologist): ‘Mark Avery is uniquely qualified to write this immensely stimulating and thought-provoking book. Reflecting on his lifetime in conservation he discusses the successes and failures of the past, and draws important lessons for more effective conservation in the future.’

Guy Shrubsole (Dartmoor-based environmenta campaigner and author): ‘Reflections is a work of distilled campaigning wisdom, told with the irrepressible optimism of a passionate advocate for nature who’s spent decades working tirelessly for wildlife. With wit, verve and clarity of prose, Mark Avery lays out a strikingly radical set of proposals for how to turn around the decline of wildlife in these isles.’

Sir Tim Smit (founder of the Eden Project): ‘Mark Avery has written a love letter to Nature. Yes it is well written and academically sound and all that you’d expect from a person of his track record, but the real pleasure of the book is that under all that patina of propriety and science you feel a Mr Darcy launching himself into the lake because nothing is more important to him than capturing our hearts with his passion. A real triumph.’

Patrick Barkham (natural history writer): ‘A clarion call for more nature in Britain and how we can get it. Wise, knowledgeable, provocative and good humoured – Mark Avery is a national treasure.’ Beccy Speight (RSPB CEO): ‘Deeply felt and clear eyed, this book admirably achieves its aim of being ‘realistically hopeful’ about a wildlife renaissance and what it will take for us to get there. You don’t have to agree with all its conclusions. But the questions it intelligently explores are the essential ones of our times.”