WPT Ambassador
Starting in 2015, the WPT was honoured to welcome Dr. Tony Juniper as ambassador. In this role, he will work with WPT to raise awareness of the most critical issues facing parrots.
Tony Juniper is an independent sustainability and environment advisor. He has served as Special Advisor with the Prince’s Charities International Sustainability Unit, is a Fellow with the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, and is a founding member of the Robertsbridge Group. He is also President of the Society for the Environment.
He began his career as an ornithologist, continuing a lifelong interest in birds and parrots in particular. In 1989 he joined the staff at International Council for Bird Preservation (now BirdLife International) to run the organisation's programme to conserve threatened parrots. His work embraced many dimensions, including advocacy for the protection of traded species under the CITES convention, raising public awareness as to the plight of threatened parrots, running a campaign to promote captive bred birds for pets, and research and fieldwork.
In 1990 Juniper accompanied a team of Brazilian scientists to search for wild populations of Spix's Macaws in the arid north-east of that country, with a project that was partially funded by the WPT. The discovery of a single remaining bird in a relict fragment of habitat helped to spark an international rescue programme for the species.
Despite moving to Friends of the Earth in 1990 to run that organisation's tropical rainforest campaign, Juniper retained a deep interest in parrots and in 1998 published, with his co-author Mike Parr, Parrots - A Guide to the Parrots of the World. This colourful and comprehensive title subsequently won the UK Library Association's McColvin Medal for an outstanding work of reference. In 2002 Juniper published Spix's Macaw - The Race to Save the World's Rarest Bird. The widely acclaimed book charted the story of this fascinating and celebrated species and was used in the making of the film Rio. Juniper speaks and writes on many aspects of sustainability and is the author of several other books, including What Has Nature Ever Done for Us? and What Nature Does for Britain, and co-author of Harmony.
People & Partners
