As the first director of the UK’s first national park, in the Peak District, and then as head of the Countryside Commission for Scotland, John Foster, who has died aged 99, was a pioneer of the protection and public enjoyment of landscapes in the UK.
At the Peak District National Park, which was established in 1951 and covers 555 square miles, mainly in Derbyshire, Foster was necessarily a trailblazer – both metaphorically and literally.
Under his administration a number of paths were created through the landscape for public use, as well as picnic sites and car parks to go with them. In 1954 he pioneered the first ranger service in Britain, with Tom Tomlinson as warden, and following the death of three rover scouts in atrocious weather during the annual Four Inns walk in 1964 he set up the Peak District Mountain Rescue Organisation and the Edale Mountain Rescue Team, in both of which wardens played a prominent part. He also helped to save the trans-pennine Hope Valley railway line, playing a prominent role in the mid-1960s at the public inquiry into proposals for its closure, which were eventually withdrawn.
As head of the first national park, Foster had the financial and administrative freedom to establish strong founding principles, including restrictions that prevented the over-development of towns and villages. But he rarely had an easy ride. Some local authorities remained hostile to the whole concept of national parks, which reduced their powers, and landowners, long rulers of their own roosts, were also challenging.
Two of his major battles were over a proposal to build a hard standing airfield near Foolow and a plan to construct a huge motor-racing circuit that would have snaked its way across the countryside around Hartington. In both cases, which Foster won, he had to stand in isolation against other statutory planning bodies, including Derbyshire county council, which were strongly in favour of such developments.
Foster felt a historical responsibility, aware of the efforts of so many ordinary British people, including through the Kinder Scout mass trespass of 1932, to establish easier access to the land. He cared deeply for the landscape, and wanted everyone to enjoy it.
After his work in the Peak District, and given that he was a Scotsman, he was happy to seize the opportunity in 1968 to become the first director of the new Countryside Commission for Scotland (CCS), with a brief to safeguard Scotland’s natural beauty and secure improved public enjoyment of its open spaces — 20 years after England and Wales had made such provision.
At the time Scotland’s beauty was under challenge from hydro-power development, blanket afforestation and the emerging off-shore oil industry. Foster brought to the CCS his experience in providing outdoor enjoyment in concert with landscape protection, and his hard-won skill in dealing with landowners and local authorities. He introduced countryside management and the new concept of countryside interpretation – helping people to understand of the meaning of different places within the rural environment – as well as ranger services, training and environmental education.
In an inspired move he appointed Don Aldridge as assistant director of conservation education at CCS. Aldridge, whom he had previously recruited as information officer at the Peak, understood countryside interpretation, having seen it in the US National Park Service, and Foster used his knowledge to put CCS at the forefront of the new discipline, later joining forces with the Countryside Commission in England and Wales to promote visitor services and ranger training skills.
Foster believed firmly that there should be national parks in Scotland, and he tried to lay the groundwork for this while he was at the CCS. But he was canny enough to know that due to various political machinations this could not be achieved quickly. Instead he championed a national approach to caring for Scotland’s natural beauty with his 1974 proposal for “a park system for Scotland”. With this he persuaded government to legislate for regional parks in 1981 to provide for the enjoyment of well-visited upland areas close to the main conurbations. National parks legislation was finally won in 2000, and since then two national parks have been created in Scotland: Loch Lomond and the Trossach in 2002, and the Cairngorms in 2003.
Born in Partick, Glasgow, to David, a gardener, and his wife, Isabella (nee Livingston), Foster was educated at Whitehill secondary school in Dennistoun, Glasgow, before training as a quantity surveyor at the Royal Technical College in Glasgow (now Strathclyde University). During the second world war he qualified as a chartered surveyor and town planner through correspondence courses, while working for a surveying firm in Glasgow.
In 1941, after the firm had won Air Ministry contracts to build new airfields along the Moray coast, Foster and a senior assistant were sent to a site office at Manbeen, Elgin, to carry out the design work, and later they were involved in the construction of bomb stores at Forres and Lossiemouth RAF Stations, as well as runways at Spey Bay airfield.
After hostilities ceased, Foster became an assistant planning officer at Kirkcudbright county council, then moved south to take up a similar post with Holland county council in Lincolnshire, where he met Daphne Househam, who worked in the county clerk’s department at County Hall in Boston. They were married in 1950.
Two years later Foster was appointed deputy to the planning officer of the Peak Park planning board, a move that turned out to have dramatic impacts, not just because it took him away from the flatlands of the Wash but because shortly afterwards his boss died and he found himself in charge – first as planning officer and then in the newly created role of director of the park.
After retiring in 1985 Foster continued his countryside work, but freed from the trammels of public office. He generously gave his skills to the voluntary sector, working with Ramblers Scotland, of which he was president, in the campaign for Scandinavian-style rights of access, and bringing credibility and expertise to discussions with landowners and other potential opponents. He also became an adviser to the Scottish Council for National Parks, and thanks partly to his efforts freedom to roam was eventually achieved in the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003: with that liberty, Scotland remains ahead of England and Wales.
Foster believed strongly in building international links among conservationists, and he encouraged his staff to be part of that wider dialogue through the Europarc Federation. He continued his international work well into retirement as a leading member of the World Commission on Protected Areas, part of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Throughout his career he was quietly effective and influential, with a strong intellect and a gentle but determined temperament. He remained bright and alert to the end: aged 98 he was interviewed for the Campaign for National Parks’ oral history project to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the 1949 National Parks Act.
He is survived by Daphne, their children, Alasdair and Caroline, and four grandchildren.
• John Foster, conservationist, born 13 August 1920; died 6 July 2020
