As a genuine naturalist Eric was a giant

With the passing of Eric Fairgrieve Greenwood, the North West lost an outstanding botanist and wildlife conservationist and the Lancashire Wildlife Trust lost a long-term, active supporter Our former chairman Steve Garland remembers Eric who died at the age of 84...

I first met Eric on the national committee of the Biology Curators’ Group where he championed museum natural history curators and their collections. He chaired the group from 1979 to 1985 and was part of the movement within the BCG that recognised biological recording as a key part of museum work.

He had been on the Museums Association’s Working Party on Records Centres in Museums in 1977 and helped to establish the NW Field Databank at Liverpool Museum, a predecessor of our current Environmental Records Centre network. The year after retiring as BCG Chair, he joined the committee of the newly-founded National Forum for Biological Recording in 1986, which is still a key national biological recording organisation today.

He kept an active interest in botany throughout his busy career and was the Vice County Recorder for VC 60, covering Lancashire north of the River Ribble. His knowledge of the flora of the county was impressive. Many times, I would send him what I hoped was a new discovery, only to find that he already knew both the plant and site.

After he retired from National Museums Liverpool in 1998, he finally found the time to complete one of his major projects, The Flora of North Lancashire, which was published in 2012. This book contains distribution maps of plants across the area, but if you read the extensive introductory chapters on the habitats of Lancashire you can experience Eric’s vast knowledge of the area, its history, geography, geology and flora.

He was closely involved with the Wildlife Trust from its early days and took an active grass-roots role in recruiting members in the 1970s when the Trust was small and he saw how a bigger and wider membership was needed.

He served on the council until 2010 and for many years on the conservation committee. Ted Jackson remembers Eric as being instrumental in persuading him to take on the role of chairman in 1979. Through this period, the Trust grew enormously and Eric kept involved, finally retiring from the conservation committee in 2017.

Eric was also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology and helped organise many of their North West events, including community and outreach events, surveying the flora. In recognition of this work, he was awarded the RSB President’s Medal in 2020.

In 2015 Eric published another bookHunting Plants: The Story of Those Who Discovered the Flowering Plants and Ferns of North Lancashire. It pulled together what he had learned while researching his flora, introducing us to the people who had played a part in the study of the area’s plants for over 100 years.

He was always c concerned about the changes in our local flora, many being negative changes, and had a keen interest in the management of our reserves. His extensive scientific and ecological knowledge and advice was invaluable to the work of the conservation committee, and he was always willing to share it.

I remember his ability to challenge perceived wisdom or assumptions. He observed that, despite "state of the art" management of some nature reserves for many decades, we had still lost key species from them. This observation had a major impact on me and my thinking around wildlife conservation; that we need to keep asking difficult questions, challenging perceived knowledge and always be led by the science.

Losing Our Good Friends

Losing a loved one is devastating, but a moment of quiet reflection in their favourite wild place can bring comfort in difficult times.

Recently one of our kind supporters, Val Finney, got in touch to dedicate a memory leaf to her late husband, Roy Finney. Val and Roy enjoyed spending time at Brockholes with their family and friends, and Val wanted a way for their cherished memories here to live on.

Val and Roy's family and friends can now visit Roy's lovingly engraved leaf that has been placed on our memory tree, overlooking the lake at Brockholes. Whenever they visit now, they can take comfort in the peace, tranquillity and beauty of their favourite space, knowing that it has been protected by their kind donation.

“Eric trod lightly, certainly seemed to avoid anything to do with politics, but as a genuine naturalist he was a giant”.Eric was a constant presence at the Wildlife Trust for over 50 years and will be sadly missed although he leaves a rich legacy.

There is no better way to remember someone who loved our region's wildlife and wild places than to safeguard our precious landscapes. When you make an in-memory donation to the Lancashire Wildlife Trust, you can rest assured that you are making a real difference; helping us look after more than 40 nature reserves and 3,069 hectares of wild spaces, inspire more than 25,000 young people each year, and stand up for wildlife wherever it’s endangered.

Eric

Greenwood (1938-2022)

If you’d like to find out more, please contact: membership@lancswt.org.uk