Guy Mountfort OBE (4 December 1905 – 23 April 2003) was an English advertising executive, amateur ornithologist and conservationist. He is known for writing the pioneering A Field Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe, published in 1954.^[1]

Biography

Born in London, Mountfort was the writer of the 1954 A Field Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe, with illustrations by Roger Tory Peterson and distribution maps by Philip Hollom. The book was the first to provide a portable, accurate, illustrated guide to essentially all birds likely to be seen in Britain, and its design influenced all subsequent field guides.^[2]

In 1961 he created the World Wide Fund for Nature (back then the World Wildlife Fund) with Victor Stolan, Sir Julian Huxley, Sir Peter Scott and Max Nicholson. In 1956 he led a n expedition to the Coto Donana with the resulting Book Portrait of a Wilderness illustrated by Eric Hosking. In 1963, he led a party of naturalists^[3] and including Huxley,^[3] George Shannon^[4] James Ferguson-Lees^[4] and D. Ian M. Wallace^[4] which made the first ornithological expedition to Azraq in Jordan.^[4] The expedition's recommendations eventually led to the creation of the Azraq Wetland Reserve and other protected areas.^[5] Papers from the expedition are in the United Kingdom's National Archives.^[6] He was appointed an OBE in 1970, for services to ornithology. In 1972 he led the campaign to save the Bengal tiger, persuading Indira Gandhi to create nine tiger reserves in India, with eight others in Nepal and Bangladesh.