<< Back
Starts: 19:30
Ends: 21:00
New Life for the Land and Wildlife and People - a talk by Derek Pretswell.
"We are in a time of great environmental peril. Our own existence and that of all life on earth is threatened, and this requires us to bring about a meaningful and lasting change in our relationship with the environment. Failure to address the fundamental issues that are causing the imbalance on the planet will result in nothing more than a delay of the inevitable. Scotland, by its very size, cannot change the world; but it can change the way in which the world changes itself."
Derek Pretswell is a zoology graduate of Aberdeen and started working on forestry and land use with Ron Greer in 1982/3 while both of them were fishery biologists with the Department of Agriculture for Scotland. A founder member of the Loch Garry Tree Group and Perth Bat Group, he served on the management committee of the Scottish Wildlife Trust reserve at Loch of the Lowes and was a Trustee of Scottish Native Woods for 10 years. In addition, he was a member of the Cairngorm Community Circle and a member of the SNP environmental policy group which, along with Ron and under Roger Mullin's leadership, formulated the SNP's main policy document.
Together with Ron, Derek founded Natural Resources Scotland in 1992 and developed the New Caledonia Project which is a holistic long term project that encapsulates the three tenets of sustainable development to bring about the 'blossoming' of our biological, social and economic landscape. Derek now teaches environmental education to schoolchildren from North Lanarkshire at an outdoor centre in Oban and during the summer takes to the lochs with Ron to research Arctic Charr populations.
All members should have received the Zoom link by email. If you are not a member but would like to attend the talk, please email Graeme, our Secretary, by 5pm on Friday 21st October - OFCSecretary20@gmail.com.
