After many years of sterling work, Simon Moore has decided to step down from NatSCA committee, and so, with his continuing support, I have taken up the reins as Conservation Representative for NatSCA.

Quick introduction…My background is biology and ecology. I am an accredited natural sciences conservator, specialising in plants, paper, bound herbaria and historic biocides.

Since graduating, I worked at the National Museum Wales (AC-NMW) as the botanical conservation and research officer. During this time I achieved an MSc in Conservation Science, and later a doctorate in devising a simple tool to identify mercury in herbarium collections and for mitigating hazardous biocides from the working environment.

This area of work still interests me, and I provide advice to individuals and institutions on how best to tackle this area. I recently left the museum after 24 years (I know!) and have set up my own conservation consultation company.

I have been very fortunate in gaining some really interesting projects to work on since leaving the museum and will post snippets about these shortly.

Conserving Kew’s Wallace Palm collection

NatSCA is a highly motivated and inspirational institution and requires a lot of time and energy from its committee. To keep this
level of commitment to its membership, NatSCA is now championing Volunteer roles to aid committee core roles. To help with sourcing information and input for this blog, I will be supported by Lucie Graham Natural History Conservation Officer at Lancashire Conservation Studio, Manchester. Thanks very much Lucie!

Apologies in the long delay in this announcement but please watch this space as there is plenty of upcoming conservation news and events, which will be posted regularly to this blog; the NatSCA calendar and the notes and comments where more detailed information will be posted. I look forward to hearing your news and hopefully we can keep this a lively and informative blog.

Vicky Purewal

Dr V Purewal ACR
Pure Conservation
Cardiff

vjpurewal@gmail.com