FLYINGhigh

Stuart Butchart was 29 when he was shot while travelling in Guatemala, with the bullet severing his spinal cord. Now chief scientist at BirdLife International, Stuart, 50, has travelled around the world in the name of conservation, recently returning from the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Montreal, shaping global conservation goals and targets. He shares his incredible story.

Q: Tell us about your early life and how you became so fascinated with birds?

A: I was given a pair of binoculars for my eighth birthday, and I remember my grandfather showing me a Spotted Flycatcher in the garden. In my early teens I crawled under a barbed wire fence around a lake to watch a pair of displaying Great Crested Grebes. I also had a biology teacher who used to take us to local nature reserves. I was lucky to have lots of brilliant early experiences that turned me into a keen birder.

Q: How did that then become the career you have today?

A: As an undergraduate, I organised and raised funding for several projects undertaking bird and mammal surveys in protected areas in various tropical countries. On one trip in eastern Paraguay, I remember emerging from lush, dense, species-rich forest and stumbling into an apocalyptic landscape beyond, where all the trees had been cut down and burnt and the land turned over to cattle pasture. Seeing the devastation, I knew then that I ultimately wanted to work in nature conservation. had smashed my mouth on the ground. I also realised that I couldn’t move my legs, but I didn’t understand why at the time.

Q: Can you share the story of your injury, please?

A: I was 29 years old and travelling with a girlfriend. We had crossed the border from Mexico into Guatemala. We were staying in a little town close to a nature reserve and, on New Year’s Day 2001, we went for a walk into the forest. A couple of miles in, we walked into an ambush by a gang of armed and masked bandits.

The open steppes of Kazakhstan were more wheelchair-friendly terrain than many other destinations Stu has visited

My girlfriend went off to get help, and after what seemed like an age, but what was probably an hour or so, some local villagers arrived, lifted me onto their shoulders and carried me out of the forest. They eventually managed to arrange for a pick-up truck to drive me to a small clinic. And after a painful and interminable day of waiting, I was medevacked to a hospital in Houston, Texas.

In some ways it all feels a little unreal 20 years later, but in other ways it seems like only a moment ago. It was a scary and traumatic experience.

Q: You did your rehab in Texas. What was that like?

A: I was in Texas for seven weeks. My parents came out to visit and my girlfriend stayed with me the whole time and was a great support. I was very lucky in some ways as the bullet severed the spinal cord but with remarkably little damage to the spinal bones. This meant that I could get on with rehab from day one. In the American private healthcare system, rehab is intensive but being able to immediately focus on learning how to live with my new situation was a huge psychological help for me and meant I could get back to work just three months after injury.

STUART’S TOP TIPS FOR BIRDWATCHING WITH SCI

Look up which reserves are accessible, on the RSPB or Wildlife Trusts websites, for example. The more popular reserves typically have at least some accessible paths and hides

2Get some mountainbike tyres – these make a huge difference if you go off-road. There are also various front-wheel attachments that can turn a wheelchair into a trike or hand-bike 3

You can bird-watch anywhere – from your garden if you have one, to a nearby park, and even in many cities you can find Peregrine Falcons nesting on the top of tall buildings.

Was there a time you thought it would end your career?

When I was in hospital trying to piece things together, I received a letter from a friend telling me about two other wheelchair users who worked in conservation. It was so encouraging and inspiring to hear that there were people in my situation doing the kinds of things I wanted to do – knowing that something is possible then reframes your own expectations.

Have you improvised any interesting ways to access remote places in your wheelchair?

(laughs) Many! From oxcarts in Cambodia, to dog sledges in Arctic Sweden and dugout canoes in Cameroon. I’ve had to be fairly creative over the years. On one work trip in Mexico, I went to see where some rare parrots were nesting. I was told that access was easy, but when

I arrived, I found we had to ascend an almost sheer cliff-face. So, my guides went to the local village and brought back a mule. It had a solid wooden saddle and virtually nothing to hold on to. I clambered up, sat on my fleece for some padding, and then held on for dear life as we ascended the vertiginous cliff. Every now and then I almost fell off and had to cling onto the poor mule’s neck! There have been many other challenges to overcome but I’ve found that, with help, almost anything is possible.

Q: Many of the best places to watch birds in the UK are notoriously inaccessible. How does being in a wheelchair limit where you can go?

A: Apart from steep slopes, the most common barriers to overcome are fences, stiles and kissing gates. These are such a pain for anyone who can’t stand and climb. Kissing gates are a relatively easy problem to solve – there is a standard accessible design which uses a RADAR key padlock and many nature reserves are starting to install them. Soft grassy tracks are also a challenge, but the most popular reserves are starting to put in firmer paths, which makes a huge difference. Wooden hides are great for birdwatching as they allow you to get closer to the birds. But poorly designed ones sometimes have a few steps to the entrance, which is frustrating and unnecessary when ramps can be easily fitted instead.

Q: How receptive are nature reserves to making their space more accessible?

A: Generally, they are pretty responsive. The challenge is that these places are often run by conservation charities with very limited budgets. But it is important to make the countryside accessible to as many people as possible. I visited one nature reserve that had recently installed a new five-bar gate and fencing, which made it completely inaccessible.

But I emailed them and got a lovely response, in which they apologised and asked for advice on how they could do things better.

Q: What is your favourite bird that people in the UK could spot this spring?

A: The Swift is an iconic migrant – they are loud and often obvious when they arrive with family parties flying at high speed and giving their distinctive screaming calls. The only time that Swifts ever land is when they are nesting, often under the eaves of buildings; they even sleep and mate while flying. Swifts typically arrive in early May, having flown from Africa. By August they suddenly disappear, and you realise that summer is over because all the Swifts have gone.

Q: Have you got a bird that is top of your wish-list to see?

Yes – the beautiful Cerulean Paradise Flycatcher, a striking blue songbird found only on one tiny Indonesian island called Sangihe. When I started working in conservation, it hadn’t been seen for over 100 years and was feared extinct, but some friends rediscovered the species in the early 1990s. A handful of remaining individuals survive in the steepest and most inaccessible gullies on one mountain, where they are highly threatened by habitat destruction. One day I would love to go there to see them and try to help the conservation of their remaining habitat.