John Lister-Kaye
| John Lister-Kaye | |
|---|---|
| Born |
8 May 1946 Wakefield, Yorkshire, England |
| Occupation |
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| Nationality | British |
| Subject | conservation |
Sir John Philip Lister Lister-Kaye, 8th Baronet, OBE (born 8 May 1946 in Wakefield, Yorkshire) is an English naturalist, conservationist, author and owner and Director of the Aigas Field Centre, among other business interests. He is married with four children and has lived in the Highlands of Scotland since 1969.
Having been born into an ancient established family who for many generations had been Yorkshire landowners, distinguished political figures and successful industrialists with interests in both quarrying and mining, John Lister-Kaye's early fascination with natural history was something his family hoped he would eventually grow out of. In 1959, at the age of 13, his parents sent him to a public school in Devon. Fortuitously for him, if not for his parents, the school was situated within an 800-acre (3.2 km2) national nature reserve and near the wilderness of the Lyme Regis landslip (to which he returned with his daughter, as documented in Nature's Child). After five years in such an environment Lister-Kaye's love of nature was deep and permanent.
After leaving school in 1964, Lister-Kaye was persuaded against his wishes to accept a post as a management trainee attached to the steel supply industry at Port Talbot in Wales.
After witnessing the ecological disaster that resulted from the sinking of the supertanker Torrey Canyon [off the Isles of Scilly] in 1967, John Lister-Kaye then knew that a long-term career in industry was not for him. The escape finally came in 1968 when he was invited by naturalist and author Gavin Maxwell, to move to Maxwell's home on Eilean Bàn (White Island) in the Scottish Highlands, to help him work on a book about British wild mammals and to assist with a project to build a private zoo on the island. Lister-Kaye readily accepted Maxwell's invitation, resigned from his job, and moved to Scotland in 1969. After Maxwell's unexpected death from cancer later that same year, both the book and the zoo project had to be abandoned, and John Lister-Kaye became both jobless and homeless. Rather than return to a career in industry he remained in Scotland and went into isolation to write a book about the short but eventful time he had spent with Maxwell on Eilean Bàn. His acclaimed first book, The White Island, was published by Longman in 1972. It has remained in print for 30 years.
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