Bob Saville Award
A brand new annual award has been created by The Wildlife Information Centre to recognise special, individual contributions to the recording of wildlife in the Scottish Borders and the Lothians.
This year the award has gone to Dr Adrian T Sumner who has, virtually singlehandedly, managed to put the slugs and snails of Scotland on the map. This has been achieved by an astonishing amount of recording in the woods, fields and waterways looking for shelled and un-shelled creatures which can be as small as 1millimetre across. However, Adrian has also spread his enthusiasm for this group of molluscs by teaching others about them through formal and informal courses and by organising and leading trips out into the field.
The perpetual award, a silver quaich, is in memory of Bob Saville who was the key staff member of The Wildlife Information Centre since its foundation in 2002 until his untimely death in 2010. Without doubt Bob Saville was one of the best known faces in biological recording in Scotland over the last 25 years. His enthusiasm and determination on behalf of biological recording was a lesson to us all and his own contribution of records, either directly or by encouraging and organising others, was outstanding. This award will encourage others like him to find out more about the fascinating wildlife of south-east Scotland and to pass that knowledge onto others.
On receiving the award, Adrian said “it is a great honour to be given this recognition and the award itself is a very fitting memorial to Bob. I really hope that it will be a stimulus to biological recording in the future.”
Dr Adrian T Sumner has supported the recording cause through becoming a founding Director of The Wildlife Information Centre for nine years and working very closely with Bob Saville as the Centre developed. He is also a leading contributor to the Conchological Society as their Scottish Recorder for all of the 41 Vice Counties in
Scotland!
For more information please contact The Wildlife Information Centre on 01875 825968 or email: info@wildlifeinformation.co.uk
Bob Saville in the field