My friend Fiona (Flo) Evans, who has died aged 65 of heart failure, was an ecologist involved in helping to establish Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) across Meirionnydd in north Wales.
Her career in the Nature Conservancy Council (NCC) was spent working with landowners, farmers and planners to conserve fragile ecosystems. She loved to debate and was a passionate advocate for nature as well as an expert witness in conservation prosecutions.
The SSSI on which she spent the most time, effort and determination was Migneint Arenig Dduallt, a 50,000-acre expanse of moorland in central Snowdonia. But she also helped to create SSSIs at Cadair Idris (13,500 acres), Morfa Harlech SSSI (5,500 acres) and Coedydd De Dyffryn Maentwrog (600 acres).
Born in Hornchurch, Essex, to Jennie (nee Mackintosh), a secretary, and Victor Evans, a Thames lighterman, Flo was the youngest of four children. Living on the edge of Epping Forest she developed a love of nature, and at Snaresbrook riding school became a skilled horsewoman. After attending City of London school for girls she cycled across France, then hitchhiked across North America before taking up a place at Loughborough University in 1978 to study for an ecology degree.
She then moved straight into freelance conservation work, including with Cotswold Water Park and for the NCC, for whom she was a summer warden at the Dyfi nature reserve at Ynyslas near Aberystwyth and the North Meadow nature reserve in Wiltshire.
Joining the NCC full-time in 1987 as assistant regional officer for north Wales, in 1991 she established the Dolgellau office of the NCC’s successor body, the Countryside Council for Wales, where she trained many fledgling ecologists. At one point she was also seconded to the Welsh government’s Living Wales Programme to help plan the establishment of a new agency, Natural Resources Wales.
In 1990 Flo married Dick Squires, the warden at the RSPB’s Ynys-hir nature reserve in mid-Wales, and they lived in a cottage in the middle of the reserve, where they encouraged horse grazing as the best way to maximise grassland biodiversity. There they also raised their sons, Hefin and Iolo, often joined by Dick’s children from a previous relationship, Miriam and Joe. Flo continued working at the Countryside Council for Wales while raising her young family, rising to be a team leader until she retired in 2016.
Afterwards Flo and Dick restored the pasture attached to a new home in the hamlet of Furnace near Machynlleth. There she helped to set up the Ceredigion Bridleways Group, liaising with Ceredigion council and local landowners to bring disused bridleways back into being.
For more than a decade she was also a volunteer access and bridleway officer with the British Horse Society. Through Pont Cymru, a non-profit organisation, she was instrumental in setting up the Dolau Dyfi project to protect and restore semi-natural grassland in the Dyfi valley.
Flo is survived by Dick, their children, grandchildren Anna and Harry and her siblings, Rowena, Alex and Ian.
