Martin Brasher took up his current role in 2006 after 6 years as Head of Defra’s Global Wildlife Division. His responsibilities include the UK Biodiversity Action Plan and England Biodiversity Strategy, Protected Areas (including SSSIs and the Ramsar Convention), and International Biodiversity Policy (including the Darwin initiative, and all aspects of the UK’s involvement in the Convention on Biological Diversity).
Further back, his three years in the Environment Minister’s Private Office in the 1980s included attending every single minute of the passage of the Wildlife and Countryside Act. Subsequently he worked on a range of environmental/conservation themes including the North Sea Conference, the setting up of the Groundwork Initiative, Zoos policy, the Habitats Directive and several international biodiversity conventions and organisations (CITES, CMS, IUCN, Global Tiger Forum, etc), interspersed with posts in the Department of Transport and the Planning Inspectorate and secondments to the United States Government and the private sector.
His original degree was in Latin and Archaeology, and he then spent two years teaching in Northern Nigeria with VSO.