Ann McCall takes over from Stuart Housden, who has led RSPB Scotland for over 20 years
Scotland’s largest wildlife conservation charity, RSPB Scotland, has appointed its first ever female leader.
Ann McCall will take over as director of the charity on 30 May, replacing Stuart Housden, who has been at the helm since 1994.
Anne has been with RSPB for nearly 19 years, having joined in 1998 as a member of the society’s planning team, working on cases like the Lingerbay superquarry, Lewis windfarm and the inquiry into the Trump golf course in Aberdeenshire.
Most recently she held the role of regional director for south and west Scotland, overseeing 100 members of staff and delivering partnership projects at a landscape scale.
Brought up near Stranraer in Dumfries & Galloway, Anne studied politics, history and law at the University of Edinburgh, before completing a post-graduate course in town planning at Heriot-Watt University. She is an accredited member of the Royal Town Planning Institute and was a Convenor of the RTPI in 2004.
Anne said: “I am delighted to have been appointed as the new director for RSPB Scotland and look forward to officially starting my role at the end of May. The natural world is under threat like never before but for many of the problems there are also solutions, if we can find the resources and the will to apply them.
“I aim to work with other organisations and individuals from across all sectors, through collaboration and partnership, with the ambition of reversing the current downward trajectory for so many of our species and habitats. Consigning future generations to lives without the critical mental and physical elements a healthy environment provides would be a shameful legacy and I will do my utmost to ensure that doesn’t happen.”
RSPB Scotland manages 77 nature reserves from Shetland to Galloway, totalling some 177,985 acres. It is the biggest nature conservation estate in Scotland and supports thousands of rare and threatened species.
The organisation employs 350 full time members of staff, represents over 80,000 supporters in Scotland and is privileged to have more than 1,800 volunteers contributing 120,000 hours of time each year to help realise the RSPB’s ambitious conservation goals.
Stuart Housden will continue working for the RSPB until he retires in October 2017, focussing on strategic corporate projects to help the organisation’s transition through the impacts of Brexit – including the need to maintain the regulatory standards of the European Directives and wider public policy reform.
