"John left one million acres of wild, weedy wilderness"

Simon Barnes remembers the life and times of the late John Burton, an unstoppable force for conservation

- By Simon Barnes

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Simon Barnes is a journalist, author and council member of the World Land Trust. He was John Burton's friend and worked with him for many years. Find out more at: simonbarnesauthor.co.uk; worldlandtrust.org

DAVID BEBBER, PHOTOGRAPHER on many of our expeditions, referred to the image below as "the Reservoir Dogs shot". You can see what he means: that sequence with a group of dodgy characters walking through an equivocal landscape with a sense of shared purpose and a hint of swagger. And why not? It was a moment of triumph.

I'm on the left. In the middle is Vivek Menon, executive director of the Wildlife Trust of India, declaiming, as is his wont: "Look at this land! It is ruined! And I am so happy!" And there at the end, looking a little subdued, as if his mind is already on the next challenge rather than glorying in this one, is John Burton.

If you look hard, you can make out the ghosts of dried-up and abandoned paddy fields. There's a cluster of huts that were already falling down, and tree saplings were springing up where rice had once been harvested. The ground was littered with great loaves: last night the elephants had been here again.

We were in Kerala, India, and this was a brand-new elephant corridor. It enabled local elephants to move from one chunk of forest to another, feeding and socialising without inconveniencing a single human. And if a corridor is big enough for an elephant, it's big enough for anything.

The area had once been a village, and its occupants had moved to a new place with brand new buildings and wonderfully fertile ground where they were growing spices as a cash crop. The relocation was their decision, and with better homes and no elephants, they saw it as a double win.