Fifty years ago – five before Life On Earth was born, ten before The Living Planet was revealed – David Attenborough was broadcasting a groundbreaking development for the natural world. In October 1974 he would play his part, add his voice, do the interviews, because he was so excited by the change taking place. Only this was not television, not a new zoo quest, not even a story of his own making. What David Attenborough wanted to share and celebrate that October actually started long before.
In 1937, a 17-year-old Lincolnshire lad called Ted travelled to another kingdom, one he knew existed but had never visited. It intrigued him. The bus that would take him to the gateway of this undiscovered realm, oddly named Gibraltar Point, stopped three miles south of Skegness, fewer than 20 from his boyhood home of Alford.
Once inside, among the sand dunes and salt marshes, Ted was so captivated by this jutting coastland’s natural beauty and the wildlife within it, he resolved to return later in the year armed with a better knowledge of shore birds. What Ted didn’t know then – before the war, before jaundice and a heart condition rendered him unfit to fight, before his life as an English teacher and Norfolk, before his return to Lincolnshire as a tutor in adult education – was that Gibraltar Point would become the source of his extraordinary gift of philanthropy to the nation.
By 1948, Ted fully understood how critical Gibraltar Point was as a nesting ground for plovers, a necessary landing station for Brent geese, a sanctuary and breeding ground for a host of wading birds. He also recognised how Britain’s post-war agriculture would change: heavier machinery; intense farming; an explosion in the use of chemicals; new construction. All would have a direct impact on Britain’s wild countryside and coastlands. When developers put forward a proposal to build a caravan park on Gibraltar Point, Ted started to talk.
Ted’s talks would not stop for the next 60 years. First, he talked to Lincolnshire County Council whom he persuaded to accept his radical and visionary proposal for Gibraltar Point as a nature reserve. Ted challenged the common thinking at the time that nature reserves should be set apart by fences to keep wildlife in, and people out. He believed nature reserves should be for people too and had no hesitation in saying so.
Ted went further. He talked to like-minded local naturalists and ornithologists to help him create what would later be called the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust to manage the new Gibraltar Point Reserve and establish a bird observatory there. By the end of the first year Ted’s wildlife trust had 129 members and the grand total of £82 in income. It was a start, but Ted wanted word to spread further and faster.
From 1954, Ted’s talks went beyond Lincolnshire’s borders. County to county, around parks, on beaches, in village halls, Ted spoke about Gibraltar Point whilst outlining his vision of a network of independent British wildlife trusts, each responsible for land and nature reserves, protected for wildlife but with open access; and each supported by the widest possible mix of people and organisations in the community.
The Ted talks that would literally change the nature of Britain’s landscape were the private conversations that followed, the advice and encouragement he gave to those all over the country, serious about following his example, eager to drum up the funds to buy commons, coastland, heathland and meadows, setting up wildlife trusts of their own. Enough fledgling organisations had hatched by 1960 for Ted and his colleagues to host the first national conference of wildlife trusts in Lincolnshire.
The British public embraced Ted’s vision too. They visited Gibraltar Point in their hundreds of thousands every year throughout the decade. So many in fact that it became necessary to build a visitor centre. And who better to open and tell the world about it in 1974 than one of Ted’s oldest friends, David Attenborough.
Today, fifty years later, the movement of British wildlife trusts is a federation of 46 independent organisations, comprising of some 900,000 members and nearly 40,000 volunteers. Not all are there because of Ted of course, but Sir David Attenborough had good reason to pay tribute to his friend as ‘a visionary, a diplomat, and above all a revolutionary’ when he died in 2015. Or as The Times put it, ‘Many of Britain’s pastoral heaths, woodlands and meadows strewn with wild flowers would have been lost forever had it not been for Ted Smith, who did more than any other person to protect wildlife in Britain after the war.’ (Obituary, 26 September 2015).
The beauty of Ted Smith is that he wasn’t a talker at all, never thought of himself as such, still less a philanthropist. He was always a 17-year-old Lincolnshire boy who had discovered an unimaginable natural treasure, who had decided to do everything in his power to protect it, and who was determined to inspire people of all backgrounds to do the same for the nature and wildlife on their doorstep.