My sister Maggie Moss, who has died aged 69 of cancer, was a teacher, author and ecologist. She came to be a keen advocate of butterfly monitoring in an urban setting.
Her interest in plants and bugs lasted all her life. Shortsightedness meant that the family interest in birds was hopeless for her – she couldn’t see them well enough. Over the years she taught me to look at all things creeping, opening up a world of bugs, beetles and parasitic wasps.
It struck Maggie that monitoring butterflies only in the countryside was missing a trick. In 2017, in Bristol, she created an urban butterfly transect to measure, by weekly survey, changes in the numbers and variety of butterflies in a set area. In addition, she initiated a conference programme looking at urban issues such as verge mowing management and wildlife gardening.
Maggie was a member of Ashley Vale Allotment Association. As the allotment’s first wildlife officer she promoted wildlife-friendly practices. With students from the University of the West of England she renovated a large pond. A motion sensitive camera was installed which revealed night-time visitors: badgers, foxes and deer.
Born in Wantage, Oxfordshire, Maggie was one of three daughters of Rachel (nee Bailey) and Basil Moss. When she was three our family moved to Redland, Bristol, where our father, a vicar, became a parish priest, then canon of Bristol Cathedral, and Maggie went to Fairfield school.
Later we moved to Dulwich, south London. Maggie went to Mary Datchelor girls’ school, Camberwell, then Loughborough College of Education, qualifying in 1974. Having taught at Weston All Saints primary school in Bath for some years, in 1978 she travelled overland, on her own, to India. The resulting increase in confidence, sense of independence and self-reliance she gained remained with her for the rest of life.
Maggie collaborated with our sister, Gemma, to write the groundbreaking Handbook for Women Travellers (1987). Translated into three languages, it offered practical advice for women travelling solo or together, covering how to stay safe and be culturally sensitive and eco-conscious. She subsequently worked with Tourism Concern to establish the Himalayan Tourist Code (1988).
Maggie met Mike Manson in 1979 at Bristol Polytechnic while training to be a careers adviser, and they married in 1984. She then worked for Avon Careers Service with young people who were excluded or failed by the education system.
Latterly she was employed as an outreach worker for further education colleges in Bristol, seeking to inform and link schools and students to the courses they offered. When she retired in 2015 she was schools liaison officer for St Brendan’s sixth form college in Bristol.
Maggie’s love of other cultures and music was broadened by travels to Ethiopia, Mali and Iran. With her she always took string to demonstrate “cat’s cradle”, an ingenious aid to help her connect with local women and children.
She was a woman of strong principles. In 2019 she was arrested outside the Home Office at an Extinction Rebellion demonstration.
Maggie is survived by Mike, their children, Hannah and Matthew, and by Gemma and me.
