One of Scotland’s leading conservation bodies has appointed a woman to its
top job for the first time, with Anne McCall becoming director of RSPB
Scotland at the end of the month.
She has already been with the RSPB for nearly 19 years, having joined in
1998 as a member of the society’s planning team, working on cases like the
Lingerbay superquarry on Harris, the giant Lewis windfarm and the inquiry
into Donald Trump golf course in Aberdeenshire.
Most recently she held the role of regional director for south and west
Scotland.
Last year Stuart Housden, who has been at the helm since 1994, announced he
would retire from the director’s post at the end of May.
Ms McCall, brought up near Stranraer, studied politics, history and law at
the University of Edinburgh, before completing a post-graduate course in
town planning at Heriot-Watt University. She is an accredited member of the
Royal Town Planning Institute and was a Convenor of the institute in 2004.
She said: “The natural world is under threat like never before but for many
of the problems there are also solutions, if we can find the resources and
the will to apply them.
“I aim to work with other organisations and individuals from across all
sectors, through collaboration and partnership, with the ambition of
reversing the current downward trajectory for so many of our species and
habitats. Consigning future generations to lives without the critical
mental and physical elements a healthy environment provides would be a
shameful legacy and I will do my utmost to ensure that doesn’t happen.”
RSPB Scotland’s landholding amounts to 77 nature reserves from Shetland to
Galloway, totalling some 177,985 acres. It is the biggest nature
conservation estate in Scotland and supports thousands of rare and
threatened species. it employs around 350 full time staff.
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