Praise for amateur ecologists

The real meaning of the word amateur has nothing to do with qualifications or where your income comes from, writes Dick Warner. 

The tone was dismissive and the woman being dismissed was a very fine botanist and the official botanical recorder for her county. “Of course, she’s only an amateur naturalist,” said one of the company. However, she made her living as a teacher and her botanical work was unpaid. The man who made the comment worked as an ecologist.

I was indignant. Part of the reason for my indignation was certainly because I’m an amateur naturalist myself. I have no scientific qualifications, my degrees are in languages and literature, and my career has been in the media. And I get fed up with the prejudice that professional scientists with degrees in botany, zoology or ecology show towards the work of amateur naturalists. It’s an invidious kind of intellectual snobbery. So I waded in to the conversation. “Charles Darwin is the greatest naturalist who ever lived”, I declared.