Derek Ratcliffe
Naturalist whose incisive research saved the peregrine falcon from pigeon fanciers and pesticides
July 29, 1929 - May 23, 2005
DEREK RATCLIFFE was internationally famous as the scientist who discovered that the organochlorine pesticides, DDT and dieldrin, were devastating peregrine falcon populations. That, however, was just one prominent feature of his distinguished 33 years with the former Nature Conservancy Council.
The fact that the killer chemicals were eventually withdrawn from agricultural use, and the numbers of Britain’s most dashing bird of prey subsequently recovered spectacularly, are very much memorials to his work. The same can be said of the network of national nature reserves and sites of special scientific interest in this country. They are among the fruits of greater government involvement in nature conservation, which he influenced significantly.
Ratcliffe’s efforts stemmed from a love of wild places, and the creatures and plants occupying them, which continued to the end of his most productive life. Tragically, he died of a heart attack while sleeping in his camper van the night before he and his wife, Jeannette, were due to board a North Sea ferry on Tyneside. This would have been the start of another summer of studying nature in Lapland — the subject of a book whose publication is due shortly.
Derek Almey Ratcliffe’s father was a cinema pianist and his mother an English teacher. He was born in Wood Green, North London, and his first taste of countryside was on holiday at his maternal grandfather’s farm in Norfolk. What undoubtedly helped to shape his future was the family’s move to Carlisle in 1938. The Lake District to the south, the northern Pennines to the east and the Galloway hills on the Scottish side of the Solway Firth were on his doorstep; very quickly, the great outdoors captured him for life.
As he grew older and more independent he was drawn increasingly into the uplands — a day out in the field might involve cycling 60 miles there and back, with a challenging walk or climb up a crag in between. So began a long-term relationship with two of the most evocative birds of the rugged landscapes into which he ventured — the peregrine and the raven.
His higher education began at Sheffield University, where he initially read zoology. However, his own high standards left him dissatisfied with the course and he switched to botany — a key move in his development into an all-round naturalist of worldwide repute. The Nature Conservancy Council, which advised government on care of the environment, had been established in 1949, and on graduating the following year Ratcliffe became one of its research students, moving to Bangor, North Wales, to work on his PhD. After completing National Service in the Army, he was finally able to join its staff in 1956.
Ratcliffe went on to become deputy director (science) and then chief scientist until his retirement in 1989. Friends and colleagues speak warmly of how many were “inspired by his knowledge, integrity and modestyâ€. His self-effacing nature was illustrated later in his memoir In Search of Nature, in which he wrote how his “debt to my employers is immeasurableâ€. If anything, he was owed a great deal by all who appreciate Britain’s natural heritage. Why he never figured in a new year or birthday honours list was a puzzle to those aware of his work.
There were elements of irony about the project that first underlined his exceptional potential. During the Second World War, with homing pigeons put to military use, predatory peregrines were officially regarded as an enemy. Out of a national population estimated at 700 pairs in the 1930s, about 600 birds, mostly in southern Britain, were shot. Numbers began to recover after the war and the falcon was given special cover by the 1954 Protection of Birds Act. Racing pigeon enthusiasts, however, objected and their campaigning led to the Home Office asking Nature Conservancy to carry out an investigation.
Ratcliffe was seconded to the British Trust for Ornithology to head the 1961-62 peregrine survey. His findings confirmed that, in contrast to the claims of the pigeon fanciers, there had been a sharp decline in the number of falcons since 1956; by 1962 the population was just half that of 1939. A feature of this slump was the tendency for eggs not to hatch, often through shells breaking prematurely, or females failing to lay.
Ratcliffe was later able to link this to accumulations of organochlorines in falcons which had eaten birds tainted by agricultural pesticides. Extensive checks of peregrine eggs in museum collections revealed that shells of eggs laid between 1900 and 1945 were of a certain thickness, but those of later years were notably thinner and more likely to break. DDT, introduced in Britain as a pesticide after the war, became the chief suspect, and scientific experiments produced confirmation.
A scientific paper of Ratcliffe’s findings was published in the journal Nature in 1967. It led to the phasing out of the use of DDT in crop-growing, and the population of peregrines and other affected birds of prey, notably the sparrowhawk, rose again. Recent surveys — using the counting methods pioneered by Ratcliffe more than 40 years ago — show that there are now almost 1,500 peregrine pairs. What is not clear is how much damage to the health of human beings was averted through the discovery of the impact of DDT on the environment.
Ratcliffe is also due much credit for what was, in effect, a Domesday Book of the most important environmental features in Britain. Ten years’ work went into the two-volume A Nature Conservation Review (1977). It covered 735 sites, representing the range of wildlife habitats, and highlighted species in need of conservation help. Professor Des Thompson, a senior official with Scottish Natural Heritage, said in a tribute that Ratcliffe had “set in place the philosophy and guidance underpinning nature conservation in Great Britainâ€.
It was certainly a principal reason why Ratcliffe was nominated by The Sunday Times in 1999 as one of the people who had shaped the 20th century. Such public accolades were comparatively rare, but he was awarded the Godman-Salvin medal of the British Ornithologists’ Union in 1991 and life membership of the British Ecological Society this year.
His impressive books — including two of the most readable species monographs published — included Plant Communities of the Scottish Highlands (1962, with Donald McVean); The Peregrine Falcon (1980, 1993 expanded second edition); Birds of Mountain and Upland (1990); The Raven (1997); In Search of Nature (2000); and Lakeland (2002). Lapland: A Natural History, an account of his annual expeditions to the far north since retiring, will be published next month. Ratcliffe was working on a book about the Galloway hills at the time of his death. Several days before his death he submitted the manuscript of what will be his last book — about Scotland’s Southern Uplands.
Ratcliffe is survived by his wife, whom he married in 1978. There were no children.
Derek Ratcliffe, conservationist and author, was born on July 29, 1929. He died of a heart attack on May 23, 2006.
