Richard St. Barbe Baker

Richard St. Barbe Baker OBE (9 October 1889 – 9 June 1982) was an English forester, environmental activist and author, who contributed greatly to worldwide reforestation efforts. As a leader, he founded an organization, Men of the Trees, still active today, whose many chapters carry out reforestation internationally.

He was born on 9 October 1889 in West End,Hampshire, to John Richard St. Barbe Baker and Charlotte Purrott. He was brother of Thomas Guillaume St. Barbe Baker. He was descended from lines of farmers, parsons and evangelists, with the occasional adventurer amongst his forebears as well. As a very young child he was attracted to gardening and, since the family’s Beacon Hill home was surrounded by a wood, he began to explore the forest at a fairly early age. He became very adept at manual work and harboured a lifelong belief in its value.

St. Barbe Baker's father wanted him to enter the ministry, so at 13 he was sent to Dean Close School, a boarding school in Cheltenham, where he became interested in the sciences of botany and forestry. A clergyman recently returned from Canada appealed to his religious heritage and suggested that the young man prepare himself for missionary work in the western region of that country. He did so in 1910, sailing the Atlantic Ocean and heading far inland, where he lived in rough-hewn conditions, devoted to studies that would earn him a diploma from Emmanuelle College, University of Saskatchewan. Doing evangelical work, travelling widely on horseback, he became convinced that the agricultural practices (including the razing of the natural scrub trees) by European settlers were leading to deplorable soil degradation and potential aridity on Canada’s prairies. Working for a short while as a logger and managing to save some money, he returned to England to study at Ridley Hall, Cambridge.

When World War I intervened, he served in France with Royal Horse Artillery (RHA) units and was wounded on three occasions. After discharge, he worked in the British Government’s social services for a period.

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