Professor Ian Swingland (1953-1965)

Prof. Swingland has been a major figure in biology conservation and biodiversity for over twenty years. His influence on the direction and progress of the science has been immense. He is an inspiring communicator and innovative thinker who has the rare ability to turn a vision into reality.

He was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's School, London, Edinburgh and Oxford Universities. At London University he read zoology and social anthropology and published his first scientific paper in Nature in 1969 while an undergraduate. After working for Shell Research International for a short time he took a Ph.D. in ecology in the Forestry and Natural Resources Department at Edinburgh University on an FCO/ODA Scholarship. He was then employed as a research and management biologist in the Kafue National Park, Zambia helping to write the management plan. In 1974 he joined Oxford University Zoology Department for five years funded by NERC and the Royal Society to work on the giant tortoises of Aldabra Atoll, Western Indian Ocean

He is Founder of The Durrell Institute for Conservation and Ecology (“DICE”) and holds the Emeritus Chair in Conservation Biology at the University of Kent, in addition to Visiting Chairs at the Universities of Michigan, Florence, Auckland, and Manchester Metropolitan. He was educated at London, Edinburgh and Oxford Universities. As Emeritus Chair in Conservation Biology in the U.K., he was a draftsman of the CBD. He has worked as a mathematician for Shell and as a biologist at Oxford, Edinburgh and with the Royal Society.

Professor Swingland is an advisor on conservation and bio-diversity management to the World Bank, the Global Environment Facility, the Asian Development Bank, and the U.K. Government. A leading authority on commercialising bio-diversity assets and the conservation of protected areas, he has obtained funding for projects in Bangladesh, Swaziland, Peru and Indonesia as well 23 other countries. He also advises major corporations on environmental policy.

As Director of DICE, he supervised work in 42 countries and trained conservation biologists from 48 countries in bio-diversity management, sustainable development and the commercialisation of bio-diversity assets. He is the founder of The Herpetological Conservation Trust, an international non-governmental organisation with substantial assets; and of “Biodiversity and Conservation”, the world’s first multidisciplinary journal in bio-diversity management and sustainable development. In 1989 he founded the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE), at the University of Kent. He produced the curriculum, wrote the content based on his own experience in the field, and raised the considerable funding required. DICE is now a world leader in the field of conservation biology teaching new generations of conservation scientists from around the world. He is a Trustee of Earthwatch and many other trusts with interests in global conservation and development. He chairs a U.K. agricultural research council. The Secretary of State DEFRA appointed him to The Darwin Initiative, which funds multisectoral projects in bio-diversity management, and the Chairmanship of the Apple and Pear Research Council.

A leading authority on commercialising biodiversity assets and the conservation of protected areas, Prof. Swingland assists numerous international bodies and projects; including the largest single biodiversity project in the world: - the Sundarbans Reserved Forest project in Bangladesh. He is a Director or non-Executive Director of 11 companies concerned with the environment.

He is a married to a former dentist, who now works in urology, with a son 15 and daughter 13 and lives on his farm in deepest Kent.