My friend Hugh Boyd, who has died aged 91, made a massive contribution to wetland and waterbird conservation at world level over six decades.
Hugh was recruited to Peter Scott’s groundbreaking team as the first research biologist at the Severn Wildfowl Trust (now the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust) at Slimbridge, Gloucestershire, in 1949. Over the next 20 years, Hugh and the team exerted an immense influence encouraging younger ornithologists and developing “citizen science” networks of volunteer counters for annual monitoring of waterbird population sizes.
They instigated multinational inquiries into bird migration routes, the ringing of swans, ducks and geese using novel techniques such as rocket netting and the study of bird behaviours at close range from specially constructed hides – all techniques we now take for granted in the management of contemporary migratory waterbird populations. At Slimbridge they created what one African professor has called “the white-hot world centre of waterbird research”. Hugh’s role was pivotal, always the unconventional expert far from the abstract academic scientist, with a wry sense of humour, who based his insight on direct field observations.
In 1967, Hugh moved to work with the eastern division of the Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS), enabling him to study his beloved geese on their Arctic breeding grounds. Hugh’s outstanding talents were quickly recognised and he was made the CWS’s chief of migratory birds. In this role he applied himself as much to fostering the growth of research on migratory passerines, seabirds and waders, as to the ducks, geese and swans about which he knew most.
As a senior CWS staff member he wielded huge influence in promoting international cooperation on conservation of waterbird habitats, and was instrumental in persuading the Canadian government to play a crucial role in the development of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. Canada not only became one of the first state members in the Americas, but hosted a series of international meetings which led to first the US, then most of the central and aouthern American states, joining the convention. The Canadian government recognised his work by appointing him a member of the Order of Canada.
Hugh was the son of Alice (nee Clark), a junior school teacher, and Henry Boyd, a pharmacist. Born in Bristol, he attended both the grammar school and university there.
In 1954 he met Gillian Corin, a secretary at Slimbridge. They married two years later and had three sons.
After his retirement in 1991, Hugh continued to study geese, celebrating his 80th birthday in Iceland observing Brent geese and publishing his last scientific article in 2012.
He is survived by Gillian and their sons, Alastair, Duncan and Guy.
