Our friend and colleague Mick Carroll, who has died of cancer aged 68, was a conservationist who worked tirelessly, often at the expense of his health, to protect birds of prey from the depredations of the game shooting industry.
Mick founded the South Ryedale and East Yorkshire Raptor Group, dedicated to monitoring and protecting birds of prey in that area – in particular the hen harrier and the Montagu’s harrier. Just before his death he made a special plea, via the Northern England Raptor Forum, for the government to uphold the law to ensure a safer future for all raptors and owls, arguing that “continued and serious threats from the game shooting industry should have been confined to history long ago”.
Mick, who was born in Lancashire, was adopted at the age of six months by John and Edith Carroll, who were in the grocery trade in Colne. On a childhood trip to Bouldsworth Moor in Lancashire his interest in ornithology was awakened, and he got his first pair of binoculars at the age of 12, the price of which in those days represented half the weekly wage of a manual worker.
After leaving school at 15, Mick went to work on a hill farm but joined the RAF at 19 and served at Catterick and overseas until a back injury forced him to leave after 11 years. He then took courses in farm management. In his first job, in Winteringham, Lincolnshire, he came into contact with a gamekeeper who had shot out a kestrel nest. He found one of the chicks, took it home and cared for it. Disgusted, he left the job and took up a post as a tree officer with Scarborough council in Yorkshire.
An increase in his military pension enabled him to move into ornithology full-time, and he worked with the RSPB at Blacktoft Sands in Yorkshire and with the North York Moors Upland Bird Study Group. His RAF regiment contacts led him to join the RAF Fylingdales Conservation Group, which promotes conservation initiatives on the early warning radar base in the North York Moors, and at various times he was president of Scarborough Field Naturalists and chairman of Ryedale Naturalists. He also worked for the Natural England Hen Harrier Recovery Project as a volunteer.
Mick is survived by his wife of 44 years, Helene, whom he met in the RAF, by their sons, Mark and Paul, and by five grandchildren.
