The NBN Trust is sad to report of the death of Dr. Charles David of the Guernsey Biological Records Centre. He died of a heart attack in September while in Sark where he was walking up a hill to meet people to discuss habitat survey work. He was 64.
The NBN Trust recorded its sadness at Charles' passing with the following letter which was sent to the President of The Société Guernesiaise.
Dear Mr Collenette,
The NBN Trust is very saddened to hear of the sudden death of Dr Charles David of the Société Guernesiaise.
In 2003, the NBN Trust was invited by Dr David and others to come to Guernsey to discuss the formation of a local biological records centre for the island. Several of us who had been involved with the establishment of the NBN were involved in that visit, and were very impressed with the work that was being carried out on the island under Dr David’s able leadership. In particular, we saw his work with the ‘Digimap’ Geographical Information System, which was enabling wildlife data to be very precisely located to individual land parcels across the island and therefore to closely inform conservation of the island’s biodiversity. It was a microcosm of what the NBN Trust was aiming to achieve on a UK-wide scale with its partners.
Dr David’s wide knowledge of wildlife was also legendary. He was not only a very able entomologist, but had recently taken on the role of Recorder for Guernsey for the Botanical Society of the British Isles. The NBN Trust is very aware that his role in the island will be very hard to replace.
More recently, Dr David had also been working with the NBN Trust to enable the NBN Gateway to be able to make use of Channel Islands data. Until now, the use of the Continental UTM grid for the Channel Islands had precluded its integration with the UK and Ireland’s different systems. However, work currently in hand is aimed at overcoming this problem, which will finally enable Channel Islands data, and in particular data from Guernsey, to be integrated with data from the rest of the UK. The NBN Trust would like to register its great thanks for his contribution in this, which will be a lasting legacy, in addition to the enormous contribution he has made to the island’s biodiversity work over many years. He will be greatly missed by us all.
Yours sincerely,
Professor Michael Hassell CBE FRS
Chairman
The NBN Trust