John Burton
Co-founder of the World Land Trust, whose ‘buy-an-acre’ project saved endangered wild habitat
JOHN BURTON, who has died aged 78, was co-founder of the World Land Trust, which has saved more than a million acres of endangered wild habitat across the planet; he was once described as “the maverick genius of conservation”.
One such stroke of genius was his “buy an acre” project: when WLT was first established in 1989 people were invited to buy an acre of rainforest for £25. Sir David Attenborough, patron of WLT and a supporter from the beginning, said: “The money that’s given to the World Land Trust, in my estimation, has more effect on the wild world than almost anything I can think of.”
It should be added that the World Land Trust does not own a single perch or square foot of rainforest or any other overseas land: the money is given to partner organisations in developing countries: highly motivated, seriously effective, utterly transparent and perpetually cash-strapped. They do the buying and the owning.
It is an idea of devastating simplicity and brilliance: if you want to save jaguars and elephants – and redshanked doucs and golden-rumped elephant shrews and Sharpe’s longclaws and Morelet’s crocodiles – then take control of their habitat and everything else falls into place.
John Andrew Burton was born on April 2 1944, only son of the portrait painter Andrew Burton and Edna May Burton, née Ede. He was nominally educated at Sunnyhill Junior School in Streatham, south London, but in reality at the Natural History Museum; from the age of six he made weekly bus trips there, alone or with his friend Tony Hutson.
He then went to Alleyn’s School in Dulwich, though his most important education came from many wildlife projects: bird-ringing, a badger and fox survey, a study of hedgehogs. He told stories against himself: for example, how he used to catch hedgehogs in Biggin Wood and sell them to Harrods for five bob a time.
After school he worked for the Natural History Museum as assistant information officer, and played tuba in an oompah band. After that he worked as a freelance writer, and has more than 40 wildlife titles to his name, including the updated and still definitive Field Guide to the Amphibians and Reptiles of Europe.
He was also the first wildlife consultant to the fledgling Friends of the Earth. It was a time when conservation was becoming less gentlemanly and more activist. Radical thinking and action were needed: it was becoming clear that the problem was not one or two species going amiss. The entire planet was radically out of joint and people were beginning to accept that we are in the midst of a genuine extinction crisis.
Burton was already an acknowledged radical in his thinking, and was head-hunted for the Fauna Preservation Society, now
Fauna and Flora International. He was chief executive at the age of 31.
Here he came under the influence of Lord Craigton, a pioneer conservationist from whom he learnt the skills and the attitude necessary to work with both old-school conservationists and the new and somewhat angrier lot. He also hired as his conservation assistant Viv Gledhill, who later went on to work for the great conservationist Sir Peter Scott in the fetchingly named post of “wildlife assistant”.
Burton then founded TRAFFIC, now an international organisation that deals with the illegal trade in wildlife, one of the biggest illegal trades in the world after drugs, arms and people. For some years, impossibly, he did both jobs at the same time. By this time he was married to Viv; they got together while separately attending an international conference at Kilaguni in Kenya.
He left both jobs in 1987 to write the superb Rare Mammals of the World,a cutting-edge concept at the time. But the step that was to define Burton’s life was still ahead. It began relatively modestly with a link to Jerry Bertrand, president of the Massachusetts Audubon Society. Bertrand’s notion was that people in Massachusetts should support the wintering grounds of the birds that visit New England in summer. Places like the rainforest in Belize. The Burtons, now operating as a team, were given $15,000 with a request to turn it into $50,000 for Belize by the end of the year. They raised five times that sum in six weeks. It was the beginning of the World Land Trust, then called the Worldwide Land Conservation Trust.
Their fund-raising efforts were powered by the first fax machine in Suffolk. They established a link with Today newspaper, which backed the scheme in return for an exclusive. Gerald Durrell, the great conservation and author, officially opened the project on May 5 1989 at Syon House Butterfly House to the west of London. The Buy an Acre concept proved irresistible: real acres in a real place for real and affordable money – acres you could go out to the Belize rainforest and see for yourself. The project, run on the ground by Programme for Belize, has 110,000 of forest and today is an island of biodiversity in a sea of the most brutal monoculture.
A key part of the Belize project was Roger Wilson, who had worked overseas in extreme places most of his life. He instilled the presiding principle of the way WLT operates: you are working with local organisations – and they are the bosses. It is their show. You are just the fund-raiser.
The Burtons set up more projects along these lines. John also mentored the people who ran the partner organisations, often in very difficult circumstances. It was system based on respect rather than neocolonialism.
A project on the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica was next, and then on the Philippines island of Danjugan, which was threatened by tourist development that would have destroyed both the forest and the surrounding reef. After that came REGUA, a rainforest restoration project in Brazil. The organisation expanded, and took on more people, with John as the front man while Viv made it all work.
The writer on wildlife Simon Barnes, a long-time council member of WLT, said: “I have visited many of the projects and soon got the hang of how the Trust worked: by means of trust, respect, friendship and a wild shared love of wild places and wild things. The absence of the corporate culture of arse-covering allowed WLT to punch above its weight on a routine basis.
“I have one regret about the times I spent with John in the wild: in Belize I saw a jaguar while he was busy with conservation finances. No apology has ever been enough.”
Burton’s taste for innovation was never sated. In more recent times he established a thrilling project in the unexpected nation of Armenia, safeguarding many acres of wild mountainous land, home to the Caucasian leopard. Armenia was the first place he travelled to after a bout of cancer four years ago.
He left the Trust in 2019 and devoted himself to other wild projects for wild places, before cancer struck again. He leaves his wife Viv, their semi-adopted daughter Lola – and a million teeming acres of wild beauty.