Xander Johnston overview
Xander Johnston AKA AntBoy, is a 14 year old entomologist specialising in wood ants and rare and endangered species found in and around the Cairngorms National Park. He is often seen on national TV in programs such as the BBC watches, Countryfile and Blue Peter, sharing his passion and encouraging others to ‘get involved’ recording and protecting the nature around us. Xander was first recognised when he was 10 years old and was awarded the first ever Cairngorms Nature Young Ambassador title, since then he has gone on to be awarded prestigious titles including the 2018 RSPB young nature champion , the 2019 national parks new horizon award, the 2020 keep Scotland beautiful young reporter award and more recently the NBN Young Person Award 2020. Xander volunteers with a number of organisations including RSPB and Butterfly Conservation helping spread the word on the importance on citizen science projects and in 2020 he arranged and ran his very own UK wide citizen science project to gather more information on the illusive shining guest ant. Xander documents his work in his YouTube channel where he also creates educational videos sharing ways for everyone to get involved.