| Freshwater Fish Specialist Group chair: Gordon McGregor Reid |
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| Gordon McGregor Reid |
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Gordon McGregor Reid is Director and Chief Executive of Chester Zoo (The North of England Zoological Society), which is an independent charity for conservation, education and science. It receives no state subsidy and the main income is from visitors and commercial sponsorship. The Zoo owns about 200 hectares, and is the leading wildlife attraction in the UK with well over one million paying visitors each year and about 6,000 animals of 500 species (approximately half of which are on the IUCN Red List). Since 1995, under the present directorship, the Zoo has experienced an unprecedented period of business growth and prosperity. The conservation outreach work of the Zoo now spans 48 countries in all five continents. Gordon is a graduate of the University of Wales, Cardiff (BSc Zoology & Psychology, 1974) and in 1978 he gained a PhD in Comparative Anatomy and Systematics from the University of London via the British Museum of Natural History. The author of more than 150 published works, his research interests include taxonomy, zoogeography and conservation biology, particularly in relation to fishes and aquatic habitats. For this research contribution, Gordon was awarded a Fellowship of the Institute of Biology. A new species of fish from the Congo rainforest (Labeo reidi) has been named in his honor. Gordon has extensive field experience in Africa, Central and South America, India, the Middle and Far East and has acted as a consultant for Conservation International, Fauna and Flora International, and the World Wide Fund for Nature (Korup Project, 1989; Gashaka Gumti Project, 1995). He has worked for Voluntary Service Overseas (refugee resettlement in Nigeria and Botswana) and British Executive Service Overseas (zoo consultancy, Eastern Europe and Bolivia). In 2004, Gordon became the elected President of the Linnean Society of London – the world’s oldest learned society for botany and zoology, the place where Darwin and Wallace delivered their original paper on the Origin of Species. |
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