Ted Smith

Background

Ted Smith came from a relatively poor background. His father Arthur was a plumber, and his parents ran a bakery and grocery shop.

Education

He attended Leeds University, and studied English, where he was taught by Bruce Dickins.

Career

He is primarily known for his work in founding the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust, and in extending the Wildlife Trust movement across Britain to form what is now the Wildlife Trusts. He spent much of his adult life working firstly as a teacher in Leeds and then Norfolk, and then as an adult education tutor in Lincolnshire. The nature conservation movement started as a very elite movement in the United Kingdom, led by wealthy aristocrats or academics such as Charles Rothschild who initially envisaged a national network of nature reserves.

After the Second World War, however, Smith drove the movement towards different goals and methods, most notably in recognising the threat from post-war agricultural methods and forming nature reserves that were accessible to the public and scientists.

This was joined with the creation of more local wildlife trusts. Smith directly helped found the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust as its first Honorary Secretary, and helped spark the foundation of other early trusts such as those in Cambridgeshire Wildlife Trust and Leicestershire Wildlife Trust.

He particularly championed the creation of the nature reserve at Gibraltar Point, which provided a blueprint for his ideas compared to the less publicly accessible nature reserves founded by earlier conservationists. Later in life he became Chairman and then President of the Lincolnshire Trust, holding the latter position until his death in 2015.

He also became the Chairman of the England Committee of the Nature Conservancy Council (now Natural England) and first General Secretary of the Royal Society of The Gibraltar Point nature reserve was dedicated to him in 2010.

Achievements

• He received multiple awards for his work in nature conservation, including the Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1998, having received the Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 1963. He was the first recipient of the Christopher Cadbury medal for nature conservation, was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Science by the University of Lincolnshire and Humberside in 1999, and became an Officer of the Order of the Golden Ark in 2000. In 2012 he received a centenary award from the Wildlife Trusts, presented by his friend and colleague Sir David Attenborough.

Politics

He was a lifelong member of the Liberal party and its successor, the Liberal Democrats.