Kate Barlow – 5th December 1970 – 23rd November 2015
Taken from a tribute by Kate E. Jones
Dr Kate Barlow, passionate wildlife conservationist and explorer has died unexpectedly after a short illness aged 44. Kate was a leading figure in wildlife conservation, a passionate advocate for bats and bat conservation worldwide, and a lover of adventure.
After graduating from Trinity Hall University of Cambridge in Natural Sciences in 1992, Kate further developed her passion for conservation by volunteering for the Surrey Wildlife Trust, and in particular learning about bats in the UK under the guidance of bat guru Frank Greenaway. She started her professional wildlife conservation career the following year where she began a PhD at Bristol University with Prof. Gareth Jones investigating the ecology and behaviour of the UK’s smallest bat, the pipistrelle. Although perhaps one of the longest studied bats in the world, there were many things that just didn’t make sense about this species. For instance, it seemed to use two very different types of echolocation calls to orientate and find food. Kate’s research set out to discover just what was different about these two ‘phonic types’. Her work demonstrated a clear separation in the way that they behaved and interacted with their environments. Kate’s work led directly to the discovery that pipistrelles were in fact two very different species; to all intents and purposes only distinguishable by the pitch of their voices (they are now called the soprano and common pipistrelles).
Following some years of research and expeditions Kate started working for The Bat Conservation Trust in 2008 as Investigations Officer and she took up the directorship of the UK’s National Bat Monitoring Programme (NBMP) the following year. Over the next few years, Kate presented the results from the National Bat Monitoring Programme to the UK Government and to experts all over the world, and helped to set up bat monitoring and other bat conservation projects in many other countries (for example, USA, Hungary, South Africa). In 2014 Kate led the publication of the first peer-reviewed paper on the NBMP, which presented UK species population trends and assessed results from the first 15 years of data of this key programme.
In early 2015, Kate moved to a job at Earthwatch as Head of Engagement and Science, where further exciting opportunities lay in store for her in global wildlife conservation.
Michael Meacher – 4th November 1939 – 21st October 2015
The NBN is sorry to report the death of Michael Meacher MP.
Former NBN Chief Executive, Jim Munford said: “The NBN owes a debt of gratitude for the faith that Michael Meacher showed in the National Biodiversity Network in its earliest day.”
Back in 2000, when Michael Meacher was Minister of State for the Environment, the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) made a contribution of £250,000 which helped kick-start the building of the nationwide computer network for sharing biodiversity information that became the NBN Gateway.
In the intervening 15 years, more than 112 million species observations have been shared via the NBN Gateway – making the NBN's database the largest in the world for any country.