Mr Chairman, Magnus MagnussonMr President. You very kindly said the platform is mine but the train must go on time or you will be blamed, so I will therefore try to curtail my remarks. Can I say Mr President how pleased I was asked to be asked to take part in these Centenary celebrations and I am also very pleased to be able to say thank you in person for the Honorary Life Membership of the Society that you have been kind enough to bestow on me. It happens to be the accident of geology and the formation of the English Channel shortly after the Ice Age that means that these islands started with a smaller range of species of wildlife and flowers that are not found in other parts of the world, so we in Britain have to cherish all the more those species that we have and we have taken a lead in conserving our natural wildlife that is part of their whole cycle of life, part of their whole global atmosphere of the planet and I agree so very much at what the President said, we cannot do without it. And in any case, we all feel ourselves trustees of our natural heritage. This may perhaps explain the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds' great success as a voluntary body. The promised foundation a hundred years ago by two other very determined women who weren't going to be put off by anything, let alone bureaucracy, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is going to be the largest voluntary conservation body in Europe and that's another first of Britain of which we can be very proud. More than half a million members not enough, 114 nature reserves carrying 180,000 acres. It has had major successes, as you pointed out Mr President, the practice of raiding the nests for rare birds' eggs is now thankfully a thing of the past, the presence of the golden eagle, the osprey and the avocet in this country owe so much to the Royal [end p1] Society's efforts but there is so much more to do, particularly as we have lost something like a 120,000 miles of hedges in the last forty years and was hope that some of them will soon be coming back. Some of the species which add so much to the beauty and richness of our country, such as the lapwing and the merlin, are under threat. So there is always more to do and I hope that the Action for Birds Campaign will achieve its target for doubling the membership and the revenue of the Society.
And finally, there is this splendid locomotive behind me which is to bear the name of the Society's emblem, the avocet. The avocet flies fast and when it walks it moves gracefully but briskly as if it always had somewhere to go. That's an apt symbol for a Society which has done so much over the last hundred years and I am sure it will be as equally appropriate symbol for the next century. It therefore gives me great pleasure to endorse the Action for Birds Campaign and to name this locomotive ‘Avocet’. I hope all of you will enjoy taking part in the inaugural journey of this train to the Society's Headquarters and the sanctuary at Sandy. Today I cannot join you on that journey but I will make it one day, you understand there is quite a lot for me to do today back at the shop. I have great pleasure in naming this engine ‘Avocet’.