Richard (Dick) John Watling (born 13 November 1951) is a Fijian ornithologist, writer and environmental consultant of British origin.

Life

Watling was born in

Uganda }), is a landlocked country in East Africa. The country is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the south by Tanzania. The sou ...

, spent most of his childhood in East Africa and first went to Fiji in 1967. He studied

zoology Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and ...

at Bristol University and then obtained a doctorate at

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...

, his doctoral thesis concerning the

red-vented bulbul The red-vented bulbul (''Pycnonotus cafer'') is a member of the bulbul family of passerines. It is a resident breeder across the Indian subcontinent, including Sri Lanka extending east to Burma and parts of Bhutan and Nepal. It has been introduc ...

, a bird introduced to Fiji where it is an agricultural pest. He has worked in the

Lake Manyara Lake Manyara is a lake located in Monduli District of Arusha Region, Tanzania and is the seventh-largest lake of Tanzania by surface area, at . It is a shallow, alkaline lake in the Natron-Manyara-Balangida branch of the East African Rift. The n ...

and

Serengeti National Park The Serengeti National Park is a large national park in northern Tanzania that stretches over . It is located entirely in eastern Mara Region and north east portion of Simiyu Region and contains over of virgin savanna. The park was established in ...

s in

Tanzania Tanzania (; ), officially the United Republic of Tanzania ( sw, Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; Comoro Islands ...

and with the

World Wildlife Fund The World Wide Fund for Nature Inc. (WWF) is an international non-governmental organization founded in 1961 that works in the field of wilderness preservation and the reduction of human impact on the environment. It was formerly named the Wo ...

's Conservation Indonesia Programme as well as at many places throughout the south-west Pacific and south-east Asian regions. He has also served as editor of ''Domodomo'', the journal of the

Fiji Museum The Fiji Museum is a museum in Suva, Fiji located in the capital city's botanical gardens, Thurston Gardens. Background The museum is a statutory body and is under the administration of the Fiji Museum Act and the Preservation of Objects of Ar ...

. and was the principal founder of NatureFiji-MareqetiViti, which is Fiji's only domestic NGO working solely for the conservation of Fiji's natural heritage

Publications

Books authored or coauthored by Watling include: * 1982 – ''Birds of Fiji, Tonga and Samoa''. (Illustrated by Chloe Talbot-Kelly). Millwood: New Zealand. * 1986 – ''Mai Veikau: Tales of Fijian Wildlife''. Fiji Times: Suva. * 1999 – ''Pocket Poster Guide to the Birds of Fiji''. Author: Fiji. * 2001 – ''A Guide to the Birds of Fiji and Western Polynesia: Including American Samoa, Niue, Samoa, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu and Wallis and Futuna''. Author: Fiji. * 2005 – ''Palms of the Fiji Islands''. (With George Bennett). Environmental Consultants: Suva. * 2006 – ''Guide to the Birds of the Kingdom of Tonga''. Author: Fiji.

References

1951 births Fijian ornithologists Fijian writers Fijian environmentalists Living people Fijian people of British descent British emigrants to Fiji {{ornithologist-stub