I first met George Rabb at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in October 1985 when I was interviewed by an intimidating panel of four men and one woman for the position of Species Programme Officer at The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) headquarters in Gland, Switzerland.
George Rabb (and Archey). Image: Phil Bishop
George was on the panel – I don’t remember much of the interview, except that I got the job, and IUCN has defined my career ever since. At the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Honolulu in September 2016, 31 years later, at the goodbye party to mark the end of my 8 years as Species Survival Commission (SSC) Chair, George gave the final speech and, in addition to saying some kind words about me, told those present: “I hired Simon!”, underlying his constant presence to me beginning with that 1985 interview.
George was already a dominant force on the SSC Steering Committee (SC) by the time I joined IUCN. I attended my first Steering Committee meeting in March 1986, and that was when I really started to get to know George, with the first of our many one-to-one in-depth conversations. His extraordinary intellect, his deep ethical commitment to conservation, and his breadth of interests marked him as an influential force to be reckoned with. Soon after, Wayne King resigned as the SSC Deputy Chair, and George was appointed to take his place. When Gren Lucas resigned as SSC Chair in August 1989, George became Chair, and served until 1996.
George assumed his leadership of the SSC while Martin Holdgate was Director General of IUCN. The two men were similar in some respects – very sharp intellects, huge knowledge and commitment, and also both to some extent a little traditional in their mannerisms. They clearly had great respect for each other, and the SSC’s standing within the wider IUCN family grew enormously under George’s leadership. George brought about many changes during his time as SSC Chair. He brought many new and younger people from across the world on to the Steering Committee, improved its gender balance, and established many new Specialist Groups (SG). Some of the most active SGs in SSC today, such as the Shark, Iguana and Invasive Species SGs, were established under George’s leadership.
George was not a typical leader. In many ways he was a shy and self-effacing man. He never sought to be the centre of attention and always gave great credit to others. But when a topic arose about which he cared deeply, he could speak with passion and conviction. George endeared himself to SSC members across the globe with his straightforward, uncomplicated commitment to saving the world’s species and natural places. He became the unofficial leader of the zoo community within IUCN and was a pioneer of the movement to bring zoos more fully into conservation, working closely alongside the likes of Bill Conway, Ulysses Seal and David Jones. George used to go to the IUCN Congress having collected a large number of proxy votes from across the zoo community. In the days before IUCN introduced electronic voting, George became famous for holding up a fistful of ballot papers whenever a vote was taken! But although he played the IUCN political game, George was never a politician in a scheming or tactical sens