Sir John Philip Lister Lister-Kaye, 8th Baronet, (born 8 May 1946) is an English naturalist, conservationist, author who is owner and director of the Aigas Field Centre, among other business interests. He is married with four children and has lived in the Highlands of Scotland since 1969. Early life Lister-Kaye was born on 8 May 1946 at Wakefield in Yorkshire and is the son of Sir John Lister-Kaye, 7th Baronet and the former Audrey Helen Carter. His older sister, Mary Eugenia Helen Lister-Kaye, is the wife of Nigel Carrel. He was born into an ancient established family who for many generations had been Yorkshire landowners, distinguished political figures and successful industrialists with interests in both quarrying and mining. Reportedly, John's early fascination with natural history was something his family hoped he would eventually grow out of. In 1959, at the age of 13, his parents sent him to Allhallows School, near Lyme Regis in Devon. This was situated within an national nature reserve and near the wilderness of the Lyme Regis landslip (to which he returned with his daughter, as documented in Nature's Child). After five years in such an environment Lister-Kaye's love of nature was deep and permanent. After leaving school in 1964, Lister-Kaye worked in the steel industry at Port Talbot in Wales, initially as a management trainee, and continuing until 1969. He has claimed he was persuaded against his wishes to accept the post. Career After witnessing the ecological disaster that resulted from the sinking of the supertanker Torrey Canyon [off the Isles of Scilly] in 1967, Lister-Kaye then knew that a long-term career in industry was not for him. In 1968 he was invited by naturalist and author Gavin Maxwell, to move to Maxwell's home on Eilean Bàn (White Island) in the Scottish Highlands, to help him work on a book about British wild mammals and to assist with a project to build a private zoo on the island. Lister-Kaye readily accepted Maxwell's invitation, resigned from his job, and moved to Scotland in 1969. After Maxwell's unexpected death from cancer later that same year, both the book and the zoo project had to be abandoned. Rather than return to a career in industry he remained in Scotland and went into isolation to write a book about the short but eventful time he had spent with Maxwell on Eilean Bàn. His acclaimed first book, The White Island,