Phyllis Barclay-Smith

Ida Phyllis Barclay-Smith , CBE (born May 18, 1902 in Cambridge , † January 2, 1980 in Islington , London ), mostly Phyllis Barclay-Smith , was a British administrator , ornithologist , conservationist and translator .

Life

Barclay-Smith was the daughter of Edward Barclay-Smith and Ida Mary Barclay-Smith, nee Rogers. Her father was a professor of anatomy at the University of Cambridge . She was educated at Blackheath High School and King's College London . In 1924 Barclay-Smith became assistant secretary of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), of which her aunt, conservationist Margaretta Louisa Lemon , is one of the founders. In 1930 she gave a lecture at the 7th International Ornithological Congress in Amsterdam on the subject of oil pollution from sea ​​birds , a problem to which she devoted her entire life.

In 1935 Barclay-Smith left the RSPB to join the International Council for Bird Protection (ICBP, predecessor of BirdLife International ) as an honorary secretary. When the war broke out, she worked first in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office , then as secretary to the managing director of the Bristol aircraft factory and from 1943 to 1945 in the Ministry of Labor as a specialist for local welfare (section: transport workers) in the Southwest region. From 1946 she was secretary of the ICBP under Count Léon Lippens and from 1974 general secretary. She ran the secretariat, which was in two rooms of the Natural History Museum in London, with a few assistants. The council consisted of national sections dedicated to bird protection in as many countries as possible, with a centrally organized secretariat. The national sections increased from 23 in 1930 to 67 in 1974. Barclay-Smith organized the council's activities worldwide and remained a key figure in the administration for about forty-five years.

Gradually, Barclay-Smith built up a complex worldwide network of contacts, where scientists, academics, politicians, civil servants and amateur ornithologists found support at conferences or their concerns were passed on to committees.

Barclay-Smith was also the Honorary Secretary and Treasurer of the British Ornithologists' Union and a member of the Home Office Advisory Committee on Wild Birds. From 1938 to 1973 she was the editor of the Avicultural Magazine and from 1954 Honorary Secretary of the International Wildfowl Research Bureau, for the establishment of which she was largely responsible.

In 1952 she was one of the co-founders of the Advisory Committee on Oil Pollution of the Sea (today Advisory Committee on Protection of the Sea ) alongside James Callaghan . She also devoted herself to raising awareness of the problem of toxic insecticides at an early stage . As secretary of the British section of the ICBP, she pursued a broad perspective and in 1968 arranged the purchase of Cousin Island in the Seychelles and the establishment of a strictly protected nature reserve on this island.

Barclay-Smith also worked as a linguist , translating standard works of ornithological literature from German and French, including Der Vogel in 1951 . His body and life ( The Bird: Its life and structure ) by Gertrud Hess , in 1954 Vie et mœurs des oiseaux ( Birds of the World: Their life and habits ) by Paul Barruel and in 1965 Les Palmipedes ( Water-birds with webbed feet ) by Paul Geroudet . She has also published her own books, including British and American game birds (1939), Birds of Lake, River and Stream (1939), Garden Birds (1945), A book of ducks (1951) and Woodland Birds (1955).

Barclay-Smith died on January 2, 1980 at Whittington Hospital in Islington, London after falling into a coma after a stroke at Christmas 1979 .

Honors

In 1958 Barclay-Smith was the first woman in the field of nature conservation to be appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE), in 1970 she became Commander of the British Empire (CBE) and in 1973 she was awarded the Order of the Golden by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands Arche honored in the knight class.

literature

• Catherine M. Haines: International Women in Science: A Biographical Dictionary to 1950. ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara, 2001, ISBN 978-1-57607-090-1 , pp. 19-20
• Colin JO Harrison: Smith, (Ida) Phyllis Barclay- (1902-1980), ornithological administrator . The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi : 10.1093 / ref: odnb / 61361
• William H. Thorpe: Phyllis Barclay-Smith . Ibis. 122 (3), 1980, pp. 374-375. doi : 10.1111 / j.1474-919x.1980.tb00895.x

Web links

• Literature by and about Phyllis Barclay-Smith in the WorldCat bibliographic database