My dad, Roy Rhodes, who has died aged 76, started his working life as a printer, but was later able to make a move into conservation work, first at a reservoir in Bolton and then looking after much of the land owned by the water company United Utilities, across an area that stretched from Carlisle to Crewe.
Roy was born in Bredbury, Cheshire, the son of Eddie Rhodes, a confectioner, and his wife, Mary (nee Gorman), and lived there until the family moved to Lancashire when he was seven, after Eddie became manager of Sovereign Toffees in Lowton. Roy went to Leigh grammar school, where he turned every English assignment into a birdwatching story and ducked out of cross-country runs to drink tea at a mate’s house, rejoining the stragglers on the final lap.
Leaving school at 16, he was unwillingly apprenticed as a printer, but the need for accuracy, an eye for detail and design, and the convenience (for birdwatching) of night shifts suited him better than he first imagined. He worked first as a linotype compositor at PT Brooks in Leigh, before going to the Warrington Guardian newspaper and then the Bolton Evening News.
In April 1972 he met Jennifer Walsh, a teacher, and they married in December of the same year. Five years later, while Roy was in Lapland on a birdwatching holiday with friends, a co-worker saved a job advert for him, knowing it would suit him to a T. They were right, and he became the first countryside ranger at Jumbles reservoir in Bolton, owned by North West Water (now United Utilities).
He developed and refined the scant job description. In time he was appointed conservation officer for United Utilities with responsibility for all its land holdings, and he continued to work for UU until his retirement in 2004. His work included surveying and protecting particular species of plants, animals and insects, and balancing the needs for public access, recreation and education with safeguarding the natural landscape.
A keen and skilled photographer, Roy developed slide shows of things that he saw in the course of his work. These went far beyond the species identification style of the time, and told rich stories of areas and their ecology. He set key sequences to music, including a sun rising on Chat Moss near Manchester to the Meditation from Massenet’s opera Thaïs. Even many years later he was approached by audience members who had been influenced by these talks from the 1970s to the 90s.
Roy is survived by Jennifer, me, and his grandson, Alistair.
