John Newbould receives prestigious B.E.M.
NEYEDC are delighted to congratulate John Newbould on receiving the British Empire Medal for "Voluntary Services to Ecological Surveying and Reporting”, in the King's Birthday Honours List. John was nominated by one of the National Trust's West and North Dorset Ecological Survey team (Helen Phythian). The countless hours John has committed to ecological recording both in Yorkshire and further afield in his now home county of Dorset, make him a most deserving recipient of this award. John has been fundamental in the success of NEYEDC, from his guiding hand around the time of NEYEDC’s creation, some 20 years ago, to his involvement in training projects and organisation of surveying efforts around Yorkshire.
Our director, Simon Pickles, remembers his first meeting of John Newbould, at the Yorkshire Naturalists Union conference at the Crown Hotel in Harrogate. Simon recalls barely making it through the revolving doors when, “a short and extremely angry man,” stormed up to him shouting, “The only way you are getting hold of my records is to prise them out of my cold dead hands.” Said angry man storms off in an apparent rage and Simon describes,
“I wasn’t sure whether he had just demanded satisfaction and I was supposed to follow him onto the stray to duel with swords or pistols. I was not entirely against the arrangement but felt he could at least have introduced himself first. I was still pondering exactly what I had done to make this gentleman naturalist so angry, when a firm hand took me by the elbow and guided me towards the bar. An entirely more amiable but only marginally less strident voice said in my ear, ‘So you are our new Data Centre Manager; never mind him come with me, we have a lot of work to do’.”
And this was Simons first encounter with John Newbould.
Following this encounter the development of a strong relationship between John and Simon would go on to form a crucial collaboration between the YNU and NEYEDC. John was one of several very kind people who gave freely of their time and access to their networks to help Simon, and NEYEDC, find their place in the strange world of biological records. Meanwhile, playing an intrinsic role with the YNU. “At the time John was YNU secretary, organised the annual conference, ensured that the YNU accounts were examined and, undertook countless other little tasks that nobody else wanted to do. He was a significant volume of the life-blood of the Union and when he retired it took several much less-willing people to fill his shoes,” Simon remembers.
Mark Wills and Clare Langrick (our two Senior Ecological Information Officers) visited John in Dorset last summer to collect some YNU publications to add to the YNU library. Here they are pictured with John and some of his team of National Trust volunteers, surveying SSSI site Haydon Downs.
With John’s help, before long Simon was, speaking at the YNU conference, on the council of the NFBR and on the NBN working group. “Well on my way to being part of the furniture,” says Simon, “I am extremely grateful for this help, without which, I may have still been a fish out of water.” John would continue to volunteer with NEYEDC despite living 300 miles away in Dorset, and take several roles within the YNU, including as president in 2013. Together, Simon and John developed training books for volunteers to help increase their data input of precision site-based data and, with other colleagues, organised the surveying of many sites across Yorkshire by the YNU.
Simon recalls John’s dedication to surveying efforts:
“Over the years, John has always been willing to undertake surveys for the Centre, often on short notice and at places that others have been unwilling to go; the unloved or common-place sites. Furthermore, you can always rely on John to send his data through before you need to ask for it and John Newbould spreadsheets have become legendary within our Centre. I have sneaked away from my computer to enjoy many days in the field with John over the years and he is always good company, though I have never really been sure whether I was Watson to his Holmes or Laurel to his Hardy. Either way, there are few people with whom I cannot get a word in edgeways and I have to admire him for that.”
John’s legacy within NEYEDC lives on in the form of his records. With almost a million records in our data base, Newbould can take credit for roughly 1% of them – a momentous contribution to today’s picture of Yorkshire’s flora and fauna. No doubt he is still adding to these records both here in Yorkshire and in Dorset.
John Newbould has contributed 9563 records to our data base over the years.
In the creation of this piece Simon volunteered a few words on John which have been peppered throughout this article. Here he describes John, his character, and his passion for his subject.
“John can best be described as a man of assertive enthusiasm. You may as well pull up a deckchair next to King Canute than try to withstand one of John’s enthusiasms; and there have been so many of them. He is passionate about training the next generation of biological recorders, a fierce advocate of the NBN and the wide availability and use of biological records, a loyal friend of Local Environmental Record Centres and an early leading light of the NFBR. Above all else, however, he is an amateur naturalist through and through. From botany to plant galls, from hedges to veteran trees he has tried his hand at all manner of taxa, but crucially he has always encouraged others to do the same.”
“I am immensely proud to have known John for 20 years and to have worked with him on all sorts of projects. He fully deserves the recognition that he has received over recent years, and I hope that he continues to contribute to natural history for the foreseeable future,” concludes Simon. Everyone at NEYEDC would like to extend our huge congratulations to John on this exciting news and thank him for his ongoing support and dedication.