Lesley Desmond Foster Vesey-Fitzgerald

Leslie Desmond Edward Foster Vesey-Fitzgerald MBE (born 7 June 1910 in Dunleer, Ireland; died 3 May 1974 in Nairobi, Kenya), often nicknamed as Vesey and known by the Africans as Bwana Mungosi, was an Irish-born entomologist, ornithologist, conservationist, and plant collector.

In the 1950s Vesey-Fitzgerald has worked as Senior Scientific Officer at the Anti-Locust Research Centre in Abercorn, Northern Rhodesia. Subsequently he became an ecologist and conservationist in the National parks of Tanzania where he experimented with an electric fence in the Arusha National Park. He further went on ornithological, entomological, and botanical surveys to Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, Zambia, South Africa, the Mascarenes, the Seychelles, and Trinidad and Tobago. His plant collections are on display in the Natural History Museum, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the Botanische Staatssammlung Munich, the NU Herbarium, University of KwaZulu-Natal, the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, and in the National Herbarium and Botanic Garden of Avondale, Harare, Zimbabwe.

The Vesey-Fitzgerald's Burrowing Skink ("Janetaescincus veseyfitzgeraldi") from the Seychelles is named in his honour.

Works (selected)

*1940: "On the Vegetation of Seychelles"
*1955: "The Vegetation of the Outbreak Areas of the Red Locust (Nomadacris Septemfasciata Serv.) in Tanganyika and Northern Rhodesia"
*1955: "Vegetation of the Red Sea coast south of Jedda, Saudi-Arabia". J. of Ecology 43:477-489
*1957: "The Vegetation of the Red Sea coast north of Jedda. Saudi Arabia". J. of Ecol. 45:547-562.
*1957: "The vegetation of Central and Eastern Arabia". J. Ecol. 45_779-798
*1958: "The Snakes of Northern Rhodesia and the Tanganyika Borderlands" Brown Knight & Truscott London
*1963: "Annotated List of Grasses Collected in the Congo Drainage Basin of Northern Rhodesia and Tanganyika"
*1963: "Central African Grasslands"
*1973: "East African Grasslands" East African Pub. House

References

*Ray Desmond, Christine Ellwood: Dictionary of British and Irish Botanists and Horticulturists: Including Plant Collectors, Flower Painters, and Garden Designers. CRC Press, 1994 ISBN 0850668433

External links

* [http://www.ntz.info/gen/n00650.html Short info about Desmond Vesey-Fitzgerald]
* [http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.AP.PERSON.BM000042502&pgs= Entry for Desmond Vesey-Fitzgerald at Aluka]