Lee Schofield | |
---|---|
Born | Scotland |
Education | Imperial College London (MSc) |
Occupation(s) | conservationist, writer |
Notable work | Wild Fell: Fighting for Nature on a Lake District Hill Farm |
Awards | Richard Jefferies Award |
Website | leeschofield |
Lee Schofield is a British naturalist and nature writer. [1] He wrote Wild Fell: Fighting for Nature on a Lake District Hill Farm, which describes his work as site manager for the RSPB at Haweswater in the Lake District National Park. [2]
Schofield was born in Scotland but spent his childhood in Devon. [3] He studied Zoology at University, [4] followed by an MSc in Ecological Management at Imperial College, London. [5] For his MSc dissertation [5] and for a subsequent academic publication, [6] he investigated social attitudes to large mammal reintroductions in the Scottish Highlands, a subject he would later return to in his writing. [7]
Schofield began working as site manager for the RSPB at Haweswater shortly after the charity took over the tenancies of Naddle and Swindale Farms in 2012. [3] The work he oversees is based on a partnership with United Utilities, [8] who own the Haweswater Reservoir and the 10,000 hectares of catchment land around it. [9] The part of the catchment that falls under the RSPB and United Utilities partnership is managed for the benefit of water, wildlife and people. [10] Major programmes of woodland, bog, hay meadow and river restoration [11] [12] have been delivered and a sustainable grazing regime with native breed cattle and ponies and a small number of sheep has replaced the previous more intensive sheep-grazing model, [8] resulting in increases in a wide range of species, including Atlantic salmon, [13] tree pipit, [14] red grouse, marsh fritillary butterfly, [15] water vole [16] and many specialist upland plants. Haweswater is increasingly recognised as one of the UK's most ambitious and pioneering nature recovery projects [4] and has received multiple awards and accolades. [17] [18] [19]
Schofield's first book, Wild Fell: Fighting for Nature on a Lake District Hill Farm, was published in February 2022. Reviewing it for The Guardian , Amy-Jane Beer described Schofield as "a delightfully companionable guide". [2] It details his work at Haweswater, charting both the ecological changes that he has helped to bring about, as well as the personal challenges involved. [3] [20] Wild Fell won the Richard Jefferies Award in 2022, [21] and was Highly Commended in the James Cropper Wainwright Prize for Writing on Conservation in the same year. [22]
Schofield regularly gives talks and interviews [23] about his work, and has contributed to several anthologies, [24] [25] co-authored academic papers, [26] [27] [6] and written for magazines, including British Wildlife, [28] Inkcap Journal, [29] Cumbria Life and BBC Wildlife.
The Lake District, also known as the Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region and national park in Cumbria, North West England. It is famous for its landscape, including its lakes, coast, and the Cumbrian mountains, and for its literary associations with Beatrix Potter, John Ruskin, and the Lake Poets.
The John Llewellyn Rhys Prize was a literary prize awarded annually for the best work of literature by an author from the Commonwealth aged 35 or under, written in English and published in the United Kingdom. Established in 1942, it was one of the oldest literary awards in the UK.
Species reintroduction is the deliberate release of a species into the wild, from captivity or other areas where the organism is capable of survival. The goal of species reintroduction is to establish a healthy, genetically diverse, self-sustaining population to an area where it has been extirpated, or to augment an existing population. Species that may be eligible for reintroduction are typically threatened or endangered in the wild. However, reintroduction of a species can also be for pest control; for example, wolves being reintroduced to a wild area to curb an overpopulation of deer. Because reintroduction may involve returning native species to localities where they had been extirpated, some prefer the term "reestablishment".
Haweswater is a reservoir in the valley of Mardale, Cumbria in the Lake District, England. Work to raise the height of the original natural lake was started in 1929. It was controversially dammed after the UK Parliament passed a Private Act giving Manchester Corporation permission to build the reservoir to supply drinking water to the city. The decision caused a public outcry because the farming villages of Measand and Mardale Green would be flooded and the valley altered forever.
High Street is a fell in the English Lake District. At 828 metres (2,717 ft), its summit is the highest point in the far eastern part of the national park. The fell is named after the Roman road that ran over the summit.
Katherine Mary Humble is an English television presenter and narrator, mainly working for the BBC, specialising in wildlife and science programmes. Humble served as president of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) from 2009 until 2013. She is an ambassador for the UK walking charity Living Streets.
A Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells is a series of seven books by A. Wainwright, detailing the fells of the Lake District in northwest England. Written over a period of 13 years from 1952, they consist entirely of reproductions of Wainwright's manuscript, hand-produced in pen and ink with no typeset material.
Low Fell is a fell in the English Lake District. It overlooks the lake of Loweswater to the south and to the north is bordered by its neighbour Fellbarrow. It is usually climbed from the villages of Loweswater or Thackthwaite. The fell is largely occupied by grassed enclosures, although there are some rocky outcrops near the top. Low Fell has fairly steep slopes to the south and east.
Selside Pike or Selside is a fell in the English Lake District. It stands between the valleys of Mardale and Swindale in the Far Eastern Fells.
Ennerdale is a valley in Cumbria, England. Ennerdale Water, fed by the River Liza, is the most westerly lake in the Lake District National Park.
The Far Eastern Fells are a part of the Cumbrian Mountains in the Lake District of England. Reaching their highest point at High Street, they occupy a broad area to the east of Ullswater and Kirkstone Pass. Much quieter than the central areas of Lakeland they offer in general easier walking as the fells merge mainly into the surrounding moorlands.
The Wyming Brook is a river in the City of Sheffield, England. Its source is the Redmires Reservoirs near the Hallam Moors. It flows in a north-easterly direction for over 0.6 miles (1 km) down quite steep terrain into an underground chamber where it joins the Rivelin tunnel before it flows into the lower of the Rivelin Dams. The river flows almost its entire length within the Wyming Brook Nature Reserve, a Site of Special Scientific Interest which is managed by the Wildlife Trust for Sheffield and Rotherham.
Daneway Banks is a 17-hectare (42-acre) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest in Gloucestershire, notified in 1954 and renotified in 1983. It lies half a mile west of Sapperton and is part of a group of wildlife sites in the Frome Valley that includes Siccaridge Wood and Sapperton Canal reserves. The site is in the Cotswold Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
Woorgreens Lake and Marsh is a 9-hectare (22-acre) nature reserve in Gloucestershire.
Dara Seamus McAnulty is a naturalist, writer and environmental campaigner from Northern Ireland. He is the youngest ever winner of the RSPB Medal and received the Wainwright Prize for UK nature writing in 2020 after being the youngest author to be shortlisted for the award.
Celtic Rewilding, formally known as Celtic Reptile & Amphibian, is a conservation company, established in 2020, by Harvey Tweats and Tom Whitehurst, with the initial aim of reintroducing extinct reptiles and amphibians back to rewilding projects within the UK. However, the company's scope has since broadened to all lost species of the UK and northern Europe. It is based in Leek, Staffordshire.
In the United Kingdom, raptor persecution is a crime against wildlife. The offence includes poisoning, shooting, trapping, and nest destruction or disturbance of birds of prey.
Karen Lloyd is an English author, poet, and environmental activist from the Lake District.
Kabir Kaul FRSA is a British conservationist, writer and urban wildlife campaigner.
Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy, abbreviated to MKWC is a non-profit trust dedicated to preserving the environment and the wildlife within.
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