Hugh Lamprey (2 August 1928 - 10 February 1996) was a British

ecologist Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps wi ...

and

bush pilot Bush flying refers to aircraft operations carried out in the bush. Bush flying involves operations in rough terrain where there are often no prepared landing strips or runways, frequently necessitating that bush planes be equipped with abnormally ...

. After travelling on student expeditions to

Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...

, the

Himalayas The Himalayas, or Himalaya (; ; ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the planet's highest peaks, including the very highest, Mount Everest. Over 10 ...

, and the Canary Islands, he served in Palestine and

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...

as a tank officer. Subsequently he obtained a position in Tanganyika, and in the Game Department in 1953, he designed methods of estimating game densities that are still widely used. He applied these to studies of food sources of Tsetse flies (specifically ''

Glossina Tsetse ( , or ) (sometimes spelled tzetze; also known as tik-tik flies), are large, biting flies that inhabit much of tropical Africa. Tsetse flies include all the species in the genus ''Glossina'', which are placed in their own family, Glos ...

swynnertoni'') in Kenya. In 1975 he prepared a

United Nations Environment Programme The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is responsible for coordinating responses to environmental issues within the United Nations system. It was established by Maurice Strong, its first director, after the United Nations Conference on th ...

report on desertification in the

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

n Sahel region, in which he concluded that "the desert southern boundary has shifted south" by an average of in the preceding 17 years. This statement has been instrumental to the belief that desertification is a great threat to the world and especially Africa.

References

Information about Northern Tanzania, biography
*

Fred Pearce Fred Pearce (born 30 December 1951) is an English science writer and public speaker based in London. He reports on the environment, popular science and development issues. He specialises in global environmental issues, including water and clim ...

New Scientist ''New Scientist'' is a magazine covering all aspects of science and technology. Based in London, it publishes weekly English-language editions in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. An editorially separate organisation publish ...

vol 175 issue 2351 - 13 July 2002, page 50. 1928 births 1996 deaths 20th-century British biologists British ecologists Bush pilots {{UK-biologist-stub