DICK BALHARRY

Globally-respected Scottish conservationist

Born: September 3, 1937.

Died: April 22, 2015.

DICK Balharry, who has died of cancer aged 77, was a passionate, outspoken, pioneering conservationist, rambler, writer and nature photographer who dedicated his life to saving and safeguarding Scotland's natural treasures - the mountains and glens, forests and fields, lochs and rivers, deer and salmon.

Friends found it fitting that he left this Earth on Earth Day, April 22, marked around the globe by millions of folks of Mr Balharry's ilk.

Even off Scotland's shores, he fought to save the wildlife, notably the whales and dolphins around the Western isles as a patron of the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust. Last Saturday, only four days before his death and despite the pain of his cancer of the oesophagus, he appeared in person to receive an outstanding achievement award from the Royal Scottish Geographical Society.

The Society's (Sir Patrick) Geddes Environment Medal, which Mr Balharry insisted be shared with his wife Adeline, recognised his half a century of nurturing our national treasures.

It was handed to him in Glenfeshie, not far from his home in Newtonmore, and in his acceptance speech, knowing he possibly had only days to live, he went out in his usual pugnacious fashion. He slammed Scotland's traditional lairds for "embodying the selfish greed of a Victorian era" by letting their shooting estates wreck the environment. The vested interests of most private landowners in Scotland were "outdated and ludicrous," he said, finishing with: "I'm on my way out."

During his 50-year career, Mr Balharry held top posts in several organisations charged with protecting Scotland's wildlife and landscape. He served as chairman of the National Trust for Scotland (NTS) in Edinburgh and the Pitlochry-based John Muir Trust, which owns and tends some of Britain's finest wild landscapes. The Trust was inspired by John Muir, the Dunbar-born founder of the modern conservationist movement who died 100 years ago after energising the American and ultimately the global national parks movement.

Mr Balharry himself achieved a global reputation among fellow-conservationists, with his work in Scotland copied in many foreign countries. A lifelong rambler to whom the word "fence" was anathema, Mr Balharry served as president of Ramblers Scotland before being given the honorary lifetime title of vice-president.

Apart from blocking ramblers, he said, landowners' fences damage the landscape and deprive deer of food and shelter. He himself gave talks and guided walks in his beloved Highlands.

Richard Balharry was born on September 3, 1937, in Muirhead of Liff outside Dundee. At age 16, after a year at technical college, he got a job in a Dundee factory. After an hour, he knew factory work was not for him. Instead, he opted for the great outdoors, getting a job as a kennel boy and keeper's assistant on an estate near Tighnabruaich on the Kyles of Bute, where he loved to watch the paddle steamer Waverley come and go.

In 1956, he went to work under Archie McDonald, the head stalker of Glen Lyon in Highland Perthshire, and in 1959 he joined the Red Deer Commission which later became the Deer Commission for Scotland and has since merged with Scottish Natural Heritage.

It was his first step on a career during which protecting our deer, allowing them roam free in their natural wooded habitat, was one of his greatest passions. He was acutely aware that wild deer are an important economic asset to Scottish tourism and profoundly believed that deer management should be done through culling, not fencing.

In 1962, still only 24, Mr Balharry was appointed Warden of the Beinn Eighe National Nature Reserve in the highlands of Wester Ross, the first such reserve in the UK. He was responsible for over 10,000 mountainous acres of Caledonian pinewood. It was there, in 1964, that he found a greenshank nest housing five eggs, a rare and significant discovery. He also did crucial research on the poisoning of golden eagles by DDT and helped get pesticides banned in the wilds of Wester Ross.

Mr Balharry was given an MBE by the Queen in 1996 for his career's work in nature conservation. He was Scottish Natural Heritage area manager for Badenoch and Strathspey, Moray and Nairn when he retired in 1997. In recent years, he was instrumental in stopping the Ministry of Defence from extending the NATO bombing range at Cape Wrath when it sought to acquire the last remaining part of the Sutherland headland it does not own.

Talking of the regeneration of the ancient native pinewoods of Glenfeshie, behind which he was a driving force, Mr Balharry said: "I have lived to see an impossible dream come true and that is very special."

"Dick was an inspirational personality, a conservation pioneer who in words and deeds showed how Scotland's land could and should be managed for nature, wildlife and people," said Mike Daniels, his long time friend and head of land management at the John Muir Trust. A statement from the National Trust for Scotland added: "Dick particularly loved the archipelago of St Kilda, not just for its stories of human drama and tragedy, but for the unique insect, plant, animal and marine life which, with his naturalist's eye, he knew had much to teach us about habitats and the effects of climate change. He bravely stepped up to the mark when the Trust was facing the most difficult of times and with his characteristic enthusiasm he raised flagging morale and paved the way for better times."

Mr Balharry was given honorary doctorates from the University of Aberdeen in 1995 and the University of Abertay in Dundee in 2010. He wrote several books including Great walks Scotland, jointly with the mountaineer and TV presenter Cameron McNeish, and Beinn Eighe: The Saw-Toothed Mountain, along with J. Laughton Johnston.

Songwriter Ewan MacColl once sang in what could be Mr Balharry's epitaph:

"So I'll walk where I will over mountain and hill, and I'll lie where the bracken is deep, I belong to the mountains, the clear running fountains, where the grey rocks rise rugged and steep. I've seen the white hare in the gulleys, and the curlew fly high overhead, and sooner than part from the mountains, I think I would rather be dead."

Dick Balharry died beneath the mountains at his home in the Highland village of Newtonmore, near Aviemore. He is survived by his wife Adeline (née Croal), son David, daughter Dawn and grandchildren Ross and Ryan.