Derek Ratcliffe - Publications

British conservationist. He joined the Nature Conservancy in 1956, becoming its chief scientist (1973–89). His main work is the Nature Conservation Revue (1977), cataloguing the prime examples of habitat in the British Is in need of protection. He was also responsible, through his study of the effects of pesticides on the peregrine falcon, for the restriction and eventual ban on the use of organochlorine insecticides.

Derek Almey Ratcliffe (9 July 1929 – 23 May 2005) was one of the most significant British nature conservationists of the 20th century. Ratcliffe was the author of the 1977 Nature Conservation Review, a document which set out the most important sites for nature conservation in the United Kingdom. He was instrumental in persuading the UK government to end the tax advantages available for planting of non-native conifer forests on Scottish peat bogs, which was threatening the internationally important large wetland area of Caithness and Sutherland known as the Flow Country.

Publications

Derek Ratcliffe's most important publications included:

Plant Communities of the Scottish Highlands (1962, with Donald McVean) A Nature Conservation Review (1977) The Peregrine Falcon (Poyser, 1980; expanded second edition 1993) Bird Life of Mountain and Upland (Cambridge University Press, 1991) The Raven (Poyser, 1997) In Search of Nature (Broadfield, 2000) Lakeland (Collins New Naturalist, 2002) Lapland: a natural history (Poyser, 2005) Galloway and the Borders (Collins New Naturalist, 2007.