William Bunting (eco-warrior)

William Bunting
Born	7 March 1916 Barnsley, England
Died	1995 (aged 78–79) Doncaster, England
Nationality	English
Occupation	Amateur naturalist Eco-warrior

William Bunting (1916–1995) was an amateur naturalist and eco-warrior who is credited with saving the wildlife habitat of Thorne Moors from the planned dumping of 32 million tons of fuel-ash,peat-cutting and drainage, and for campaigning for the reinstatement of public footpaths on maps of the same Moors.

He was born in Barnsley on 7 March 1916, and between 1936 and 1939 was involved with Spanish Civil War anarchists, working as a courier and smuggler. He was later employed as an engineer's fitter. He was an auto-didactic naturalist and after 1950 on Thorne Moors he discovered an alga living on the antennae of water fleas. He contributed to the discovery of a Bronze Age trackway constructed of wood, buried on the same moors.

In the late 1940s he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and left the army with a pension and a severe inflammation of the vertebrae or Spondylopathy. Due to this he suffered pain and illness for the rest of his life, and this was possibly one of the reasons why he was described as "irascible, foul-mouthed and middle-aged", and a "crochety eccentric". He died in 1995 at Doncaster.

In 1952 there were no public footpaths shown across Thorne Moors on the map then published by West Riding County Council. Public rights of way were governed by regulations and laws, for the interpretation of which a knowledge of Latin, Middle English and Law French was required. While employed as an engineer's fitter, he taught himself these languages and legalese to challenge in Court what he saw as an illegal enclosure of Thorne Moors. As part of this process of legal challenge he regularly walked the traditional footpaths there, breaking through or removing barriers and confronting the landowners on their own land. He wrote daily protest letters to the authorities. He is said, by Catherine Caufield, to have carried weaponry, including a revolver, swordstick, machete, wire-cutters and his own calling cards to be defiantly left after removing footpath-barriers. He is quoted as saying, "What do you think I use them for, picking my bloody nose?" when asked whether he had fired the gun. The footpaths were reinstated on large-scale maps.

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