Chief Executive of Norfolk Wildlife Trust, Brendan Joyce, received an OBE on Thursday for services to nature conservation.
The award was made in recognition of Brendan’s unwavering commitment to protecting Norfolk’s wildlife, in a career of 30 years in conservation that has seen him lead the Trust for 22 years.
Brendan’s vision for Norfolk is to see the future of wildlife protected and enhanced through sympathetic management and crucially that people are connected with and inspired by Norfolk’s wildlife and wild spaces.
His major achievements include the undertaking of landscape-scale conservation – Living Landscapes – a fifty-year programme to create ecological networks and help wildlife survive in the threat of climate change. This has included significant land acquisitions across the county, including
Cley Marshes,
Roydon Common NNR and most recently 655 acres of
Hickling Broad NNR. Major projects protecting Norfolk’s threatened habitats have seen the creation of new wetlands in the Wissey Valley and their restoration in the Broads National Park. In 2007, under Brendan’s leadership, the Trust opened a new visitor centre at its flagship nature reserve, NWT Cley Marshes and the
Simon Aspinall Wildlife Education Centre was opened there in 2015 by Sir David Attenborough and Ben Garrod.
Since he joined NWT in 1995, membership of the Trust has more than doubled, with the current figure standing at over 35,500 members. He has always believed education to be a crucial factor in the future of nature conservation, and under his leadership more than 25,000 school children and local people annually attend events, workshops and nature reserve visits to learn about Norfolk’s wildlife and habitats and the importance of preserving it for future generations.
Brendan Joyce said
"It is an incredible honour to receive this award from our Patron, Her Majesty the Queen. In recognising my work for Norfolk’s wildlife, it also highlights the work of all those around me at the Trust both staff and volunteers. It also reflects a willingness amongst people in Norfolk to believe in the rights and value of our natural world and I am privileged to champion conservation on their behalf."