Obituary Mr St Barbe Baker

Press, 11 June 1982, Page 3

Obituary Mr St Barbe Baker

PA Timaru Mr Richard Edward St , Barbe Baker, of Mount Cook Station, a world-renowned silviculturist, conservationist, and founder of the Men of the Trees organisation, died in Canada yesterday. He was 92. Mr Baker died in Saskatoon during a visit to the University of Saskatchewan, which annually offers an award in his name and is where he took a degree. Mr Baker was bom in October, 1889. In 1979, to mark his ninetieth birthday, he planted the last tree in an arboretum in London, where famous personalities from throughout the world had planted trees since 1953. Sir Stuart Mallinson, the founder of the arboretum and another world figure in conservation and forestry, said at the time that no one man had done more for the preservation of trees than Mr Baker. Mr Baker wrote more than 30 books about trees and the environment. In 1967, “Sahara Conquests’’ won the Fresha’l Award for the most humanitarian book of the year, i The book traced Mr Baker’s efforts to stop the advance of - the Sahara Desert, and his efforts to modify the desert climate so that food could be produced from the land to feed the hungry millions. In 1974, at Mr Baker’s suggestion, Septuagesima Sunday (February 10) was celebrated as Tree Sunday in England for the first time. • He wrote a special prayer for the occasion, and to coin-

cide with the day he published his twenty-eighth book. “Famous Trees of the Bible Lands.” In 1978 he was awarded the 0.8. E. in the British New Year Honours in recognition of his life-long,dedication to conservation of the environment. He was awarded an honours doctorate from Saskatchewan University. Born in Southampton, England, Mr Baker studied at both Cambridge and Saskatchewan universities, and completed a post-gradu-ate course at the Imperial Forestry Institute at Oxford University. . After five years Army service, much of it in France during World War I, he became Assistant Conservator of Forests in Kenya. It was there that he founded the Men of the Trees. He moved to a similar post in Nigeria where he initiated silvicul-

tural experiments in mahogany forests. From 1930 he travelled widely through Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the United States, and Canada lecturing on trees and the environment, and preparing forestry and environmental plans for a host of .countries. From the Men of the Trees in Kenya he extended the movement to Britain and Palestine, and in 1932 founded a world-wide society that in 1947 assumed world leadership in tree regeneration. In the late 1940 s he led an expedition on a 900-mile survey of desert and equatorial Africa, and he revisited the Sahara many times. He convened the inaugural Sahara Reclamation Conference at Rabat, and later led a deputation of members of the Friends of the Sahara on a 25,000-mile tour of 24 countries. From 1959 he made his home in New Zealand. In 1976, on his return to New Zealand from the United States, he announced his firm intention to remain at home, but invitations to speak on his subject continued to flow in from many countries, and annually he left New Zealand for extensive lecture tours, to the United States and Canada, Kenya, Nepal, China, and numerous other countries. Mr Baker is survived by his second wife,- formerly Miss Catriona Burnett, of Mount Cook Station, whom he married in 1959? and a son and a daughter of his first marriage.