In Memoriam: David McTaggart, 1932-2001

The environmental movement has lost a great leader and an inspirational friend. On the 23rd of March, 2001, David Fraser McTaggart died in a car accident near his home in Italy. David was one of the people recognized as bringing Greenpeace, and the environmental movement as a whole, to the forefront of world politics. In the early 1970s David sailed to the South Pacific on several occasions, to protest the French atomic bomb tests in Muroroa. In 1973, he was attacked by French commandos, who boarded the boat the Greenpeace III, and physically assaulted. The incident was photographed, and the resulting international furor led to the French announcement in 1974 that it was banning atmospheric atomic bomb testing.

David was well known to all of those who attended the International Whaling Commission meetings. He worked long and hard to help promote the 1982 moratorium decision by the IWC. He was an outspoken critic of the Japanese and Norwegian whalers, and was instrumental in the designation of the Antarctic Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. Blunt, feisty, and to the point, he never feared taking on a challenge to save the whales, save the oceans, save the planet. David changed the face of world politics by bringing environmentalism to the center stage. His vision, energy and commitment live on, and he will be remembered thankfully by the generations yet to come.

- Kate O'Connell