Guy Mountfort

Ornithologist, energetic wildlife campaigner and a founder of the WWF

Guy Reginald Mountfort, ornithologist, wildlife campaigner, soldier and businessman: born London 4 December 1905; director, Mather & Crowther (later Ogilvy & Mather) 1949-66; Honorary Secretary, British Ornithological Union 1952-62, President 1970-75; OBE 1970; Vice-President, World Wildlife Fund 1978-2003; married 1931 Joan Hartley (née Pink; two daughters); died Bournemouth, Dorset 23 April 2003.

Guy Mountfort was a gifted ornithologist, energetic wildlife campaigner and author of a best-selling field guide to British and European birds. He was a founder in 1961 of the World Wildlife Fund (now the Worldwide Fund for Nature), also serving as its Vice-President and helping to set up nature reserves and National Parks in Europe and Asia. He also led the WWF's successful campaign to save the Bengal tiger from extinction. In other roles, Mountfort was director of the leading advertising agency Mather & Crowther (which became Ogilvy & Mather), and had a distinguished record of wartime service in the British army.

Mountfort was the driving force behind one of the most successful natural-history books ever published, A Field Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe, first published in 1954. The book revolutionised bird identification by dispensing with lengthy descriptions of appearance and behaviour to focus on key "field marks". To produce it, Mountfort teamed up with the American ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson, whom he had met in 1949 at Hawk Mountain, Pennsylvania, where birdwatchers congregate to witness a spectacular annual migration of birds of prey. They quickly agreed that Mountfort would provide the text, and Peterson the illustrations. A third author, Philip Hollom, prepared the distribution maps.

Mountfort's text was not only a masterpiece of condensation, but firmly based on experience in the field. All but a handful of the 565 species described he had seen in their natural habitat, from sub-polar wastes to the Mediterranean coast. The book went on to sell nearly a million copies. It went through five editions, and was translated into 14 languages.

Guy Mountfort was born in London in 1905, son of a well-known portrait painter, Arnold Mountfort. His father left his mother when Guy was six, and the family eventually moved to Highcliffe, near Christchurch, then in Hampshire, where, as some compensation, Guy could indulge his love of birdwatching. He left the local grammar school at 16, and, after a year or two of washing laboratory bottles and as a door-to-door salesman selling typewriters, he found more congenial work as an advertising assistant with the Douglas Motorcycle Company. There he met his future wife, Joan Hartley, to whom he was happily married for 71 years.

After the outbreak of the Second World War, Mountfort served with the Honourable Artillery Company, where his leadership qualities and organisational ability earned him rapid promotion to the rank of lieutenant-colonel within three years. In the latter part of the war, he was posted to British Army staff in Washington, from whence he was sent on missions to war zones in the Pacific, Burma, North Africa and Europe to iron out equipment-supply problems.

In 1947, Mountfort joined the London advertising agency Mather & Crowther. He became a company director, and later served as managing director of its London office when the company was merged with a larger New York agency to become Ogilvy & Mather. He retired in 1966.

What was to become a third career began in 1961, when, with Peter Scott, Julian Huxley, Max Nicholson and other visionaries, Mountfort helped to found the World Wildlife Fund. Its purpose was to act as an international fund-raising body to save endangered species. With his business background, Mountfort was a natural choice as its first treasurer. His greatest contribution, however, was to organise and lead a series of expeditions, first to Spain, and later to the Danube, Jordan, Gambia and the Indian subcontinent, which offered expertise and funds to help set up protected sites in those countries. His three expeditions to the Coto Doñana in southern Spain laid the foundations for the Doñana National Park, one of the outstanding natural areas of Europe.

In 1963, Mountfort was invited by King Hussein of Jordan to advise his government on nature conservation. This, too, was fruitful. Three years later, the kingdom had established a Royal Council for Nature Conservation, and its first six nature reserves. The detailed diaries that Mountfort kept on these expeditions were used for his books about them: Portrait of a Wilderness (1958), Portrait of a River (1962) and Portrait of a Desert (1965). Eloquently, and often amusingly written, the "Portrait" series did well, and helped to raise the profile of nature conservation, and win government support.

Perhaps Mountfort's best- remembered work was his pivotal role in saving the Bengal tiger from what seemed to be impending extinction from a combination of hunting and habitat destruction. In 1968, he met and persuaded India's prime minister, Indira Gandhi, that action was needed to save India's national animal. By fund-raising efforts in many countries, the WWF raised £1m towards a comprehensive programme of protection, which led to 17 nature reserves covering 23,500 hectares of tiger country, and the banning of tiger-hunting. Within 10 years tiger numbers had doubled. The project spearheaded nature conservation in India and the surrounding countries, and became one of the classic wildlife success stories. Mountfort recounted his personal four-year crusade in Tigers (1973) and Saving the Tiger (1981).

Mountfort's other books included The Hawfinch (1957), a scientific study of one of Britain's most elusive birds that probably no one else could have written at that time. His passionately felt concern for the fragility of the world's wildlife and the need for action before it is too late was the subject of So Small a World (1974) and Back from the Brink (1977). In 1978, he received the WWF's rarely bestowed Gold Medal for "Operation Tiger", and in 1980 became a Commander of the Golden Ark. He was appointed OBE in 1970.

Guy Mountfort was a tall, vigorous, pipe-smoking personality with a rare combination of gifts – a single-minded passion for nature, combined with a flair for organisation, and an ability to make his case without resort to conservation gobbledegook. He was devoted to his family, and was a talented gardener. In his final years, he endured growing deafness and disability with patience and stoicism. He saw as the greatest challenge of the new century the demands of the increasing human population throughout the world. Yet over a long lifetime he saw conservation grow from a minority pursuit to a mainstream world activity, a transformation in which he played no little part.

Peter Marren