GUY MOUNTFORT: Guy Mountfort, who has died aged 97, was not only an outstanding ornithologist, but a vigorous international campaigner for wildlife conservation. An advertising executive by profession, he played a leading voluntary role in the founding, in 1961, of the World Wildlife Fund (the World Wide Fund for Nature from 1986 to 2000, but now known as WWF).
He was its treasurer from the outset until 1978, when he became a vice president, and he headed its campaign to save tigers from extinction.
The million-selling A Field Guide To The Birds Of Britain And Europe (1954) revolutionised British bird-watching: he was the driving force behind it. His popular series of Portrait books resulted from expeditions he organised to Spain's Coto Donana, the Danube delta and Jordan. Indeed, his three visits to Spain in the 1950s helped to establish the Donana National Park as one of western Europe's outstanding natural areas.
The WWF emerged from a meeting that Mountfort had with other distinguished naturalists who were concerned about the unprecedented risk to the wildlife heritage: Sir Julian Huxley, zoologist and scientific administrator, who died in 1975; Peter Scott, broadcaster and founder of what is now the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, and Max Nicholson, director-general of Britain's Nature Conservancy. The Swiss-based charity was set up to raise money to protect endangered species and their habitats.
By the time Mountfort produced his autobiography, Memories Of Three Lives (1991), WWF had raised £200 million towards 6,000 urgent conservation projects in 130 countries. It had also figured in the ratification of international treaties to curb whaling and the trade in endangered species and to preserve tropical forest, wetland and coral reef habitats.
Mountfort's four-year crusade to save the tiger began in 1968 with a meeting with India's prime minister, Indira Gandhi, who agreed that the country's national symbol had to be preserved. The threat of extinction prompted the Indian government to respond with a plan to spend $5 million (of which the WWF raised almost $2 million) over five years.
The result was 17 well-managed and fully protected reserves; within a decade, the tiger population more than doubled.
Mountfort's childhood began in comparative luxury in a house with servants in Chelsea. His father was a society portraitist.
When Guy was six, there was a "great upheaval", which left his mother in a small terraced house in Croydon with four children. Their father eventually became a "mere memory", but moving to Hampshire in 1914 brought the compensation of sparking Guy's interest in wildlife.
After the family went to Bristol in 1920, Mountfort left school at 16 to start his first job, washing laboratory bottles. Next came an unsuccessful period as a door-to-door typewriter salesman in Wales, but then he found his niche - as an advertising assistant with the Douglas Motorcycle Company.
As well as meeting his future wife, Joan, who was the managing director's secretary - they married in 1931 - this led him to a grander appointment with General Motors of America's Frigidaire subsidiary in France.
After the outbreak of the second World War in 1939, he served with the Honourable Artillery Company, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel in three years. Posted to the British army staff in Washington DC, he was sent on missions to North Africa, Burma and the Pacific and European war zones.
From 1946 to 1947, he was advertising manager at Procter & Gamble's British subsidiary. He moved to a London advertising agency, Mather & Crowther, where after six months he became a director. Following a merger with a New York agency in 1964, it became Ogilvy & Mather; until his retirement in 1966 he was a director of the firm and managing director in London.
In 1949, Mountfort visited Pennsylvania's Hawk Mountain to watch the migration of its famous birds of prey. There he met US ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson, whose field guides to the birds of America had set new standards.
They agreed to produce a similar book covering Britain and Europe, with Peterson doing the illustrations and with species geographical distribution expert Phil Hollom as the third co-author.
As Birds Of Britain And Europe, it reached a fifth edition in 1994 and appeared in 13 foreign language editions.
Mountfort's other books included The Hawfinch (1957), Portrait Of A Wilderness (1958), The Vanishing Jungle (1969), Tiger (1973), So Small A World (1974), Back From The Brink (1977), Saving The Tiger (1981), Wild India (1985) and Rare Birds Of The World (1988).
From 1952 to 1962, Mountfort was honorary secretary of the British Ornithologists Union, and from 1970 to 1975 its president. As well as the WWF's gold medal in 1978 for Operation Tiger, in 1971 he received the OBE, and in 1980 he became a Commander of the (Dutch) Order of the Golden Ark.
By the time of his 95th birthday in 2000, Mountfort was philosophical about the numerous environmental changes that he never got round to addressing.
As he told Bird Watching magazine, "No one can personally take on all the world's problems. The main problem in this new century will be the demands of the increasing human population throughout the world. This will be the main factor determining the pressures on all forms of wildlife and their habitats. We must never let up on our commitment."
Mountfort is survived by his wife and two daughters.
Guy Reginald Mountfort, ornithologist, conservationist and advertising executive, born December 4th, 1905; died April 23rd, 2003.