Sam Allen
Sam is a charity communications professional and graphic designer. She is a thorough researcher and competent communicator across the board.
Sam was my colleague at the Soil Association, where we researched issues such as bovine TB together. We’ve also collaborated on a freelance basis, combining our skills to deliver the goods for Our Forests, the Save Our Antibiotics Alliance and Population Matters. Sam is someone whose judgment and insight I value highly.
Hen Anderson
Hen is the co-founder and coordinator of grassroots campaign organisation Save our Woods.
I met Hen at her sustainable smallholding on Exmoor, where she and her partner lived in a yurt. Despite that isolated location, Hen was one of the key activists coordinating local people across the country against the proposed sell-off of the Public Forest Estate.
An essential member of Our Forests, Hen was armed with the social media skills and nous to get our message out to communities fighting for their forest.
Rich Daniels
Rich is the chairman of HOOF (Hands off our Forest) and a working free-miner in the Forest of Dean.
Rich has been at the forefront of fighting to secure his beloved forest against the depredations of distant politicians. HOOF made headlines in 2011 by burning a model of Big Ben at a public rally – thus making their view of forest sell-off plans very plain indeed!
Rich brought grassroots credibility to Our Forests, and his polite, but considerable presence and knowledge of forest law put politicians on their mettle!
Dr Gabriel Hemery
Gabriel is a silvologist (forest scientist), author and Chief Executive of the Sylva Foundation.
Gabriel provided Our Forests with critical silvicultural knowledge and connections to fellow foresters. Gabriel writes a popular forestry blog, and his beautiful and hugely informative book, The New Sylva, was published in April 2014.
Tony Juniper
Tony is a highly respected writer, sustainability advisor and leading British environmentalist.
I first worked alongside Tony at Friends of the Earth during the 1990s, when we were both senior campaigners. We collaborated on the (Save) Our Forests campaign, and continue to work together – most recently in connection with his work on the ‘value of nature’.
Rod Leslie
Rod is a former Head of Policy at the Forestry Commission, where he worked for over 35 years (he is now retired).
Rod’s experience gave considerable weight and credibility to Our Forests. Had he still been at the FC when the ‘disposal plans’ emerged, those ministers proposing to flog-off our public forests would have received robust and reasoned advice as to why the proposal would lead to a PR disaster and the demise of their political careers – as indeed it did!
Philip Lymbery
Philip is Chief Executive of animal welfare charity Compassion in World Farming.
I’ve known Philip since the 1990s. As you’d expect from someone working to bring an end to factory farming, Philip is a thoroughly decent, humane and patient man. But beneath the calm personality is a steely spirit – Phil has investigated more of the vilest, most distressing examples of animal exploitation than anyone else. Yet he remains eminently reasonable – never forgetting that CIWF was founded by a dairy farmer, who foresaw the damage that industrial-scale food processors and retailers would wreak upon the farming community.
Robin Page
Robin is founder and chair of the Countryside Restoration Trust (CRT), and a self-declared ‘rural irritant’ – but he is much more than that.
A former presenter of the TV series ‘One Man and His Dog’, Robin has a formidable and direct knowledge of farming and countryside matters. Though I may not always agree with Robin’s views, I respect the man and what he has achieved with CRT.
Following a challenge Robin laid down in the Daily Telegraph in 1992 – in which he insisted he could turn ‘barley baron’ land back to fields profitable for farming, and no longer barren of wildlife – Telegraph readers raised the funds to buy CRT’s first field. Since then Robin has built the CRT into a national body, farming over 1,500 acres with wildlife in mind.
Jonathon Porritt
Jonathon is the UK’s best known environmental campaigner and ‘voice’ for the wider green movement.
Jonathon was Director of Friends of the Earth from 1984 to 1991, a period covering my first stint as an employee there. In 1996, with Paul Ekins and Sara Parkin, Jonathon set up Forum for the Future, which remains his ‘home base’. He is the author of several seminal green books, the latest being, The World We Made.
Jonathon was instrumental in setting up Our Forests and provided oversight and advice in my efforts to engage environmental NGOs in the population debate.
Danielle Styles
Danielle is a freelance copywriter specialising in charity comms, social enterprise and digital.
Danielle is one half of the creative force behind this website, with brother Andrew making up the other half of my development team!
As well as developing written content and photography for my website, Danielle has also advised me on marketing strategy, and techniques for effective blogging.
Danielle has worked with various charities, including the Earth Champions Foundation and Charities Aid Foundation (CAF). In 2014, her passion for conservation took her to a remote Canadian island off BC’s Central Coast, where she wrote digital content for the charity Pacific Wild. Her immersion in the wilderness and close encounter with a wild wolf sparked a keen interest in the rewilding movement.
Andrew (AD) Styles
Andrew Styles, better known as ‘AD’, is a talented digital designer and front-end developer.
Being a WordPress wizard, Andrew worked on the technical side of setting this site up, as well as designing my logo. Andrew also designed the logo for Population Matters’ PopOffsets project.
Andrew’s charity comms work has focused on branding, website and campaign poster design for testicular cancer charity It’s in the Bag.
Organisations
Avon Wildlife Trust
Avon Wildlife Trust is the largest local charity working to protect wildlife in the West of England area (formerly the County of Avon).
I currently work at AWT part of the week as Director of Community Programmes.
Care Farming UK
Care farming is the therapeutic use of farming practices, using the whole or part of a farm to provide health, social or educational care services for vulnerable people.
Common Ground
Common Ground is a charity that explores the relationship between nature and culture through various channels, including music, sculpture, poetry, film, markets, photography, architecture, gardening, publishing and pamphleteering. The idea of ‘Local Distinctiveness’ percolates through everything they do.
Compassion In World Farming (CIWF)
CIWF was founded over 40 years ago, by a British farmer who became deeply concerned by the development of modern, intensive factory farming. Today CIWF campaigns peacefully to end all factory farming practices. CIWF commissioned me to resurrect and galvanise the Save Our Antibiotics Alliance.
Countryside Restoration Trust (CRT)
The Countryside Restoration Trust is the UK’s leading charity promoting wildlife-friendly farming and campaigning for a living, working countryside. CRT believes that wildlife is integral to good farming. That philosophy is put into practice on over 1,500 acres of working farms, small-holdings and woodland across the country. I am a current trustee of CRT.
countrysiderestorationtrust.com
Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA)
Diligent, carefully planned undercover investigations are at the heart of EIA’s work. The agency goes out to the frontlines of environmental crime and returns with the credible intelligence and persuasive imagery necessary to confirm preliminary research and tip-offs in the field. I served as a trustee for EIA for several years.
Friends of the Earth
The UK’s leading environmental campaign group – promoting practical solutions to environmental problems; offering action at the individual, local, national and international level.
I was employed by FOE for nearly 15 years over three periods – starting off as a volunteer, rising to become Senior Agriculture Campaigner and latterly Local Campaigns Director.
Hands off our Forest (HOOF)
A grassroots, locally located campaign group fighting to keep the Forest of Dean in public ownership for public good – and extending those principles to all public woods and forests across England.
The Land Is Ours
The Land Is Ours campaigns peacefully for access to the land, its resources and the decision-making processes that affect them. I am an occasional contributor to The Land magazine published by TLIO.
Population Matters
Population Matters’ vision is for a sustainable future for our planet with decent living standards, a healthy environment and a stable population size.
In 2012, Population Matters commissioned me to persuade environmental NGOs to speak out on the link between human population and environmental decline.
Save Our Woods
A grassroots organisation formed to get to the facts behind the 2010 proposed sell-off of our Public Forest Estate (PFE), to campaign for the removal of the forestry clauses from the Public Bodies Bill and to ensure that our publicly owned forests remained in public ownership, in perpetuity.
38 Degrees
38 Degrees is an online activist organisation that brings huge numbers of people across the country together on the issues that matter to them. In doing so, they create an effective national lobbying force, underpinned by local action.
I worked with 38 Degrees on the (Save) Our Forests campaign, in which their national reach and ability to organise people locally was critical in forcing the Government to drop its disposal proposal for the PFE.
