The Swallowtail and Birdwing Butterfly Trust, registered on 9 May 2017 in England as charity number 1174142, is led by a volunteer President and Board of Trustees who bring a wide variety of expertise and enthusiasm to its work. Learn more about each below.
Henry Sackville Barlow OBE MA FCA
Henry is the Founding Patron of the Trust. Educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied languages and gained a Trevelyan Scholarship for his work on moths, Henry is also a qualified Chartered Accountant. His career has been largely in the palm oil sector, where he has served on a number of corporate boards. He is currently a Director of Sime Darby and Chairman of New Britain Palm Oil Ltd, which owns Higaturu Estate in Papua New Guinea. Henry has published various entomological and historical papers and books, including ‘An Introduction to the Moths of South East Asia’ and an historical biography ‘Swettenham’. He is a lifelong lepidopterist and naturalist and has supported numerous conservation charities and publication projects.
As Patron to the Trust, Henry advises the Chairman and Board of Trustees on financial affairs, strategic direction, partnerships and opportunities for the future.
Henry is a permanent resident in Kuala Lumpur, Peninsular Malaysia, where he worked for many years on Malaysianisation of UK incorporated estate owning companies. In recognition of his work, Henry was awarded Johan Setia Mahkota by Yang di-Pertuan Agong in1998, and Darjah Kebesaran Dato’ Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah (DSIS) by the Sultan of Selangor, bearing the title of ‘Dato’, in 2003.
Nicholas Mark Collins MA MBA PhD
Mark was the Founding Chairman of the Board of Trustees and now holds the honorary role of President after his term as Chairperson came to the end on 8th May 2025. He has spent most of his career as an entomologist and tropical ecologist, specialising in the conservation of insects and other invertebrates. Trained in natural sciences at Wadham College, Oxford and Imperial College, London, and with an MBA from the Open University, he was formerly employed at the UN Environment Programme in Nairobi and as Director of the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre in Cambridge, amongst other positions. Mark has 11 books and more than 150 articles to his name. Notable amongst these are Threatened Swallowtail Butterflies of the World: the IUCN Red Data Book (with M.G.Morris) and Swallowtail Butterflies: An Action Plan for their Conservation (with T.R.New). In 2000 Mark was awarded the Royal Geographical Society Busk Medal “for contributions to conservation policy and research”. As well as being a Fellow of the RGS, he is also a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society and Chair of the Broads Society. He lives near Cambridge and has a basecamp in the heartland of the UK’s swallowtail country – the Norfolk Broads.
Sara Frances Harvey FCCA
Sara is the Trust’s Honorary Treasurer. She has over 40 years’ experience in accountancy, tax and audit. Sara is currently working part-time as a consultant to Stephenson Smart Chartered
Accountants, based in East Anglia, following the disposal of her practice in Acle. She has 20 years’ experience of charities both as a treasurer and independent scrutineer; 10 years as an elected member of the global council of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA); and is currently chair of the ACCA Global Tax Forum. Sara spends her free time walking and enjoying nature and the countryside, both in the UK and abroad. She lives in Norwich, UK.
Oliver Leigh-Wood
Oliver is a Founding Trustee. His involvement with Lepidoptera began at an early age collecting and learning to breed from whatever flew in his parents’ garden, a lifelong interest he is now passing on to future generations. His business career allowed him to travel extensively and wherever he has been he has always taken an inquisitive look at the local flora and fauna.
Oliver has been a supporter and member of the British Entomological and Natural History Society for over 50 years, and is also much involved in the effort to give new life to old buildings. In addition to his voluntary work for the Trust, he is Chair of the Friends of the City Churches. He lives in London, UK, where he takes care of two acres of gardens.
Sophie Hall BA MA MSc
Sophie is an SBBT Trustee specialising in communications and marketing. Her professional role is in the communications team at Butterfly Conservation. Sophie graduated with an MSc in Marketing (Distinction) from the University of Manchester and has over 9 years of experience spanning digital marketing, brand, fundraising comms, and creative project management. She has worked for several well-known brands, including Debenhams, Mountain Warehouse, SEA LIFE and The RSPB. Sophie also has experience in Higher Education, having delivered communications for the fundraising arm of the University of East Anglia, helping them reach their £100m campaign target. Sophie is an amateur naturalist who enjoys hiking, fossil collecting, and searching for all of the butterflies in Britain.
Martin Partridge BSc MBA DPhil FRSC
Martin is a Trustee and the Trust’s Honorary Secretary. Trained at the Universities of York, Sydney and Durham, his professional role was as a director of research and development in the field of chemistry with many scientific papers and patents to his name. He has retired from Johnson Matthey, a then FTSE 100 company. From a very early age he held an interest in nature and conservation and he now enjoys wildlife photography and helping to preserve habitats for others to enjoy. Whilst living in Cambridgeshire he obtained a National Lottery grant for a wildflower meadow, orchard and pond for Great Gransden. Now the lead organiser for a brownfield biodiversity site adjacent to his workplace, he lives in Yorkshire where he is Chairman for the local branch of Butterfly Conservation. Martin coordinated the two highly successful on-line conferences which have the trust have run. Martin is a photographer who enjoys nothing better being out photographing butterflies and in particular Swallowtail species around the world.
Clive Huggins FRES
Clive is a SBBT Trustee, formerly an entomologist at the Natural History Museum, London, specialising in butterflies. He went on museum backed expeditions to East Africa and Belize, from which behaviour and biological discoveries were published, including new insect species collected. With Dick Vane-Wright, Clive initiated the first comprehensive taxonomic catalogue of butterflies for any major tropical region (Africa), covering 14,000 names, contributing the Papilionidae chapter.
From the Museum he moved to Kenya, assisting the President of the Royal College of Physicians with his genetic studies of mimicry in swallowtail butterflies.
In recent years, Clive returned to entomology and is currently a volunteer on the NHM Lepidoptera curation team. Joining Operation Wallacea expeditions as an entomologist representing SBBT, in 2018 to post hurricane Dominica then 2019 and 2022 to Fiji, included research on the recently discovered Papilio natewa.
A Royal Entomological Society Fellow, Clive is now using his experience as a consultant entomologist for natural history film and tv productions.
Sophie Ledger BSc (Hons), MSc, MbyRes, Mem.RES
Sophie Ledger is a Trustee of SBBT and a passionate conservation biologist. Her professional experiences include research, field ecology, science-conservation policy and countering illegal wildlife trade, with roles at institutions such as ZSL, Kew Gardens, the Natural History Museum, Stop Ivory and the Elephant Protection Initiative Foundation.
With a particular interest in lepidoptera, Sophie’s postgraduate research included a study on habitat-based models for predicting butterfly presence in fragmented landscapes. She has contributed to studies using historical butterfly collections at the NHM, collaborating on research into South American Nymphalidae with Dr Blanca Huertas.
Now based at the Institute of Zoology, Sophie works on developing biodiversity indicators for underrepresented species groups, including butterflies. A trained IUCN Red List assessor and member of the IUCN SSC Butterfly and Moth Specialist Group, she is a focal point for the global reassessment of swallowtail butterflies. She is proud to have the opportunity to build on the pioneering work laid by SBBT President Dr Mark Collins within Threatened Swallowtail Butterflies of the World: The IUCN Red Data Book and Swallowtail Butterflies: An Action Plan for Their Conservation.
