John Newby

John Newby was instrumental in founding the Sahara Conservation Fund and is its first Chief Executive Officer, taking up the position on July 1, 2005. In the photo below, John meets with colleagues from Niger's Wildlife Service and local NGO, GAGE-Azihar.

Biography

  John Newby was born in Lincolnshire, England,
   and studied zoology at Aberdeen University,
   graduating in 1971 with a B. Sc. Honours Degree.
   The same year, he took up a position with United
   Nations Volunteers, working as a wildlife
   biologist in Chad. From 1972-1978 he worked in
   the Ouadi Rimé-Ouadi Achim Game Reserve on
   the conservation of desert antelopes, including
   the now extinct scimitar-horned oryx.

  In 1980, John moved to Niger with IUCN and WWF
to establish the 80,000 km² Aïr and Ténéré National Nature Reserve and World Heritage Site. In
1991 he moved to Switzerland to head WWF International’s Africa & Madagascar Programme.
And in 1998, WWF’s Species Programme. After 28 years with WWF he took up a job with the
Environmental Agency of Abu Dhabi (UAE) as Director of the Terrestrial Environment Research
Centre.

In 1999, John founded with a group of other desert wildlife enthusiasts, the Sahelo-Saharan Interest Group (SSIG) and with their sponsorship led several expeditions to Chad and Niger to document desert fauna and flora and to raise awareness of the need for urgent conservation action.

In July, 2005, John was appointed Chief Executive Officer of the newly established Sahara Conservation Fund. He has published many popular articles and scientific reports and made numerous presentations on all aspects of conservation in Africa. Along the way, he is proud to have been decorated twice by the government of Niger for services to nature conservation, winning an Honorary Mention in the Rolex Awards for Enterprise, and having been made an Officer in the Order of the Golden Ark by HH Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands.

John is a Conservation Fellow of St. Louis Zoo, a Research Fellow in the Smithsonian Institution, and a Scientific Collaborator at the Institut Royal des Sciences Naturelles in Belgium. He is privileged to have seen the desert at a time when wildlife was still abundant and desert dwellers lived in simple harmony with their surroundings. A great believer in the statement once made by G. W. Murray, a British Surveyor working in Egypt, that “a day spent out of the desert is a day wasted”.