Leaders

Nigel Spring taught environmental studies in a Dorset Middle School for 14 years before setting up and running The Kingcombe Centre from 1987 until 2004. He is closely involved with the management of the Butterfly Conservation reserves in Dorset and is responsible for the education section of Butterfly Conservation’s website.

A botanist who originally trained as a zoologist specialising in otter and water vole ecology, Kathy has a very wide-ranging interest in natural history and is closely involved in the management of Butterfly Conservation’s wildlife sites in Dorset and Somerset. She runs a small flock of pedigree sheep for conservation grazing and uses a pony for forestry work on the local BC reserves.

Sarah Rodger works for the Cambridgeshire Wildlife Trust. Since she took part in the first EuCAN visit to Hungary in 2007, she has become involved in leading conservation projects for the BTCV as well as for EuCAN and helped to organise the Orchard Conservation visits to Belgium and southern France in the autumn of 2009.

Melvyn Jones is a member of the East of England Apple and Orchard Group and the Midshires Orchard Group. He has surveyed the new city area of Milton Keynes for orchards in their various guises: farmhouse remnants, community orchards, gardens, allotments and amenity planting. He established a heritage orchard for Newport Pagnell and has recently acquired, with others, a licence to work a 300-tree cider orchard elsewhere in Milton Keynes. He has participated in a number of conservation visits abroad including with EuCAN, and regularly leads conservation-based holidays with BTCV in both the UK and abroad