Name Stewart McPherson | Role Writer | |
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Books Pitcher Plants of the Old W, New Nepenthes, Carnivorous Plants and Their Hab, Pitcher Plants of the Ameri, Sarraceniaceae of South America | ||
2010 icps conference lecture stewart mcpherson the disvovery of carnivorous plants
Stewart R. McPherson (born 1983) is a British geographer, field biologist, nature photographer, and writer.
Contents
- 2010 icps conference lecture stewart mcpherson the disvovery of carnivorous plants
- Exploring carnivorous plants on auyan tepui with stewart mcpherson
- Background
- Work in natural history
- Television presenting
- Awards
- Published work
- References
Exploring carnivorous plants on auyan tepui with stewart mcpherson
Background
McPherson graduated in geography at the University of Durham in England, and studied briefly at the University of Tübingen in Germany, and Yale University in the United States. On graduation in 2006 he founded Redfern Natural History Productions in Poole, Dorset to conduct natural history research, publishing, filming and eco-tours.
Work in natural history
McPherson is the author of around 20 volumes published by his own company and concerned with natural history, largely focusing on carnivorous plants. He has co-discovered a number of species (including the much publicised Nepenthes attenboroughii) and has formally described around 35 carnivorous plant taxa.
He is a member of the IUCN SSC Carnivorous Plant Specialist Group. He documented each species in full detail in its natural habitat, taking seven years with many expeditions in the tropics of Southeast Asia, Africa and South America. Over time he has transitioned into TV presenter and natural history writer.
He set up "Ark of Life" to conserve species on the brink of extinction, initially carnivorous plant groups.
Television presenting
McPherson has appeared in several documentaries, including a conservation documentary on the lost world tepui sandstone plateaux of southern Venezuela and the borderlands of northern Brazil and western Guyana. A 2011 documentary Mountain with No Name was set on Palawan in the Philippines, where he discovered new species of flesh eating plants on a previously unexplored mountain. An earlier 2010 film documented the discovery of Nepenthes leonardoi.
His most recent series for the BBC was "Britain's Treasure Islands", a series of three episodes in which he visits all of Britain's 14 overseas territories, travelling 70,000 km in the process. Working with cameraman Simon Vacher, he discussed the natural history of each location and history of British settlement, except for the Chagos Archipelago. In that episode he merely mentioned that the inhabitants were "resettled" in 1966, while the wiki page for the Chagos Archipelago says this: "Officially part of the British Indian Ocean Territory, the Chagos were home to the Chagossians, a Bourbonnais Creole speaking people, for more than a century and a half until the United Kingdom evicted them between 1967 and 1973 to allow the United States to build a military base on Diego Garcia, the largest of the Chagos Islands. Since 1971, only the atoll of Diego Garcia is inhabited, and only by military and civilian contracted personnel." During the documentary he says that the atolls are almost entirely unexplored, without explaining that access has been highly restricted, by the US military. Not even the native Chagossians are allowed to return. Stewart McPherson also states in the introduction to the documentary that all the inhabitants of British Overseas Territories have voted to remain British citizens, which hardly seems the case of a population "evicted" from their homes and their country by the British government over half a century ago. In British Antarctica and South Georgia he retraced the expedition of Ernest Shackleton, and made a rare visit to the Chagos Archipelago and Pitcairn Island. The series was filmed in 2012, 2013 and 2014 and broadcast on BBC Four in 2016.