Anthony J. (Tony) Gaston
I was born in Beckenham, UK, in 1946. I have been studying natural history since 1957, being part of the Whitgift School Selborne Society and a trainee bird bander (ringer) from the age of 13. My career included working for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in Scotland (Loch Garten) and Wales (Gwenffwrd); collecting hominoid fossils for Yale Peabody Museum in Egypt, Iran, India and Pakistan; observing birds and other wildlife in the central Sahara; surveying wildlife, especially pheasants, in the Western Himalayas; studying rainforest birds in the Western Ghats of India. In 1978, I initiated the Himachal Wildlife Project in the state of Himachal Pradesh which, in collaboration with many other people and organisations, carried out the first large-scale, systematic survey of wildlife in that State. The project was an important stimulus for the creation of the Great Himalayan National Park, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I returned to India many times to continue research in the Western Himalayas, and to carry out contracts with FAO, the World Bank and the Sardar Sarovar Independent Review, as well as to travel almost everywhere in the subcontinent in search of the the strange and wonderful.
From 1975-2014 I carried out research for Environment Canada, studying marine birds in Nunavut and British Columbia, and the impact of introduced species on the terrestrial ecology of Haida Gwaii. My major area of research was the impact of climate change in Arctic Canada. In 1990, I was one of the founders of the Laskeek Bay Conservation Society, an environmental organization based in Daajing Giids, Haida Gwaii (BC) specializing in developing citizen science. I continue to serve as their Director of Research.
I am the author of, or one of the authors of, more than 200 scientific papers, four books on seabirds, including the account of the Auks in the Oxford University Press series Bird Families of the World, and monographs on the Ancient Murrelet and the Thick-billed Murre. I co-authored the Birds chapter for the CAFF Arctic Biodiversity Assessment and co-edited the Birds of Nunavut. During 1990-2010 I managed and co- edited the journal Marine Ornithology. I received the Doris Huestis Speirs Award for Outstanding Contributions to Canadian Ornithology (2007) and the Jamie Smith Mentoring Award (2013), both from the Society of Canadian Ornithologists, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Pacific Seabird Group (2014).
I continue to write books, articles, songs and poems. Some of them get published, some are for the amusement of friends.