Ian Swingland


Ian Richard Swingland is a British conservationist, convicted in 2017 of conspiring to commit fraud by false representation. He founded DICE at the University of Kent in 1989, recognised as one of the first interdisciplinary research and postgraduate training institutes in the world concentrating on biodiversity, communities and sustainable development. While at DICE he served as director and was elected to the first chair in Conservation Biology in the United Kingdom.

Early years and education

Swingland is the only child of Flora Mary, who was recruited by Special Operations Executive before working as a senior lecturer in the Polytechnic of Central London, and Hugh Maurice Webb Swingland, an electrical engineer who rose to the rank of Director, MoD Procurement Executive after serving in the Royal Navy North Sea minesweepers during World War II. Swingland was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, London, followed by London, Edinburgh and Oxford Universities. At London University, he read zoology and social anthropology and published his first scientific paper on the location of memory in a vertebrate in Nature in 1969 while an undergraduate. After working for Shell Research International for a short time, he took a PhD in ecology in the Forestry and Natural Resources Department at Edinburgh University on a Department for International Development Scholarship and subsequently worked as a research and management biologist in the Kafue National Park, Zambia for the Government.

Career

In 1974, Swingland joined Oxford University Zoology Department for five years to work on the giant tortoises of Aldabra Atoll, western Indian Ocean. He has been, or is, a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, University of Florence, University of Auckland, Manchester Metropolitan University and Beijing Forestry University and has worked as a research mathematician for Royal Dutch Shell at Sittingbourne, in Kent, England. In 1979 he was appointed to the University of Kent to create their Natural Science Continuing Education programme and ten years later founded DICE, The Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, a multi-disciplinary research and conservation training institute. The name was chosen in recognition of Swingland's friend, Gerald Durrell, and his commitment to conservation. Swingland retired from the University in 1999 but serves as Professor Emeritus.
Swingland founded the Herpetological Conservation Trust in 1989, an international NGO and the international journal Biodiversity and Conservation in 1992, the first multidisciplinary journal in biodiversity management and sustainable development. He also co-founded a number of companies which apply business and market approaches to benefiting conservation, biodiversity and people on an integrated, sustainable and ethical basis and co-founded, with Neil Wates and Sir Colin Spedding, the think-tank RURAL in 1980. One of these companies, Sustainable Forestry Management Limited, was incorporated in Bermuda in October 1999 and liquidated in 2011.
Swingland was a draftsman of part of the Convention on Biological Diversity concerning fair and equitable sharing of benefits and was asked by Sir Peter Scott to create the IUCN/SSC Tortoise Specialist Group in 1981 which is now the Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group. He directed the First World Congress of Herpetology 1989. He is also a co-founder and former chair of the Rural Regeneration Unit, a social enterprise dedicated to self-help projects and a substantial food co-operative, and the Durrell Trust for Conservation Biology, the trust that was dedicated to supporting DICE. He has served on the RSPCA Council 1990–1995 and as chair of its Wildlife Committee 1985–1990, as well as delivering their 150th Anniversary Lecture. Since 1985 he has served at various times on the Council of Fauna & Flora International and has been the longest standing board member to the Darwin Initiative, which funds multi-sectoral international projects in biodiversity management for the UK government. He was chair of the Apple and Pear Research Council from 1997, now part of the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board since 2003, and is a benefactor of Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand and was an Ambassador to Galapagos Conservation Trust until 2019. He supported the founding of Great Oaks Small School, Sandwich which specialises in those who have difficulty in benefiting from conventional mainstream education.
Swingland was invited by the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning and Swedish Research Council Vetenskapsrådet to evaluate their biodiversity and Linnaeus research programmes throughout the country.
Swingland has been an advisor on conservation and biodiversity management to the World Bank, the Global Environment Facility, the Asian Development Bank, and the UK Government, and has been employed as a research and management biologist in the Kafue National Park, Zambia, helping to write the management plan; and the Sundarban Biodiversity Conservation Project in Bangladesh. Swingland has been heavily involved with the Iwokrama International Centre for Rain Forest Conservation and Development, the largest biodiversity project belonging to the Commonwealth and was appointed Chairman of the International Board of Trustees by the president of Guyana and the Secretary General of the Commonwealth Secretariat under the patronage of the Prince of Wales. He also advised China on integrated ecosystem management projects; its aim was to reduce land degradation, create alternative livelihoods, and conserve biodiversity using a market, not donation, approach. He led the Indian Ocean and Galapagos part of Operation Drake, and was a member of a UK scientific expedition, the Royal Geographical Society expedition to the rainforest of Gunung Mulu National Park, Sarawak.
Swingland is director emeritus and former trustee of Earthwatch 1999–2009, and is a founding trustee, former chair and now Trust Patron of Operation Wallacea since 2010. The trust funds projects which seek to empower communities and individuals to develop successful commercially viable enterprises linked to the protection of biodiversity.

Awards and recognition

Swingland was made an honorary Doctor of Sciences by the University of Kent for his service to biodiversity conservation. He was awarded the Freedom of London 2001 and made an Honorary Bioscience Fellow, Commonwealth Agricultural Bureau International, 2002. He was a Fellow of the Zoological Society 1974 and a member of the Athenaeum Club, London 2004.
Swingland was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2007 New Year Honours for his services to conservation. The appointment was cancelled and annulled in November 2017.

HMRC and "Operation Amazon"

Ian Swingland was involved with Carbon Research and Development Limited, a now defunct company incorporated in Mauritius on 21 March 2005, and stood trial on charges involving the facilitation of tax evasion between 2005 and 2008. At the end of the trial, which commenced on 20 September 2016 and lasted four months, he was acquitted on the principal charge. He was found guilty on 3 March 2017 of one count of conspiring to commit fraud by false representation, receiving a two-year sentence, suspended for 18 months at Southwark Crown Court on 10 March 2017..
Reporting restrictions relating to the various trials brought under the "Operation Amazon" investigation were maintained until 25 February 2019. On 30 September 2017, while remaining a benefactor, Swingland resigned as a director of The Wallacea Trust. On 30 November his name was erased from the register of members of the Order of the British Empire.

Published works

Some fifty papers published in books and journals such as Nature, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Journal of Theoretical Biology, Journal of Zoology London, Journal of Animal Ecology, Animal Behaviour, and Proceedings of the Royal Society.