Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index Charles Waterton (June 3, 1782 - May 27, 1865) was an English naturalist and explorer. Waterton was born at Walton Hall, West Yorkshire near Wakefield. In 1804 he travelled to Guyana to take charge of his uncle's estates near Georgetown. In 1812 he started to explore the hinterland of Guyana, making four journeys between then and 1824. He later described his discoveries in his book Wanderings in South America. In the 1820s he returned to Walton Hall and turned it into the world's first wildfowl and nature reserve. He also invented the bird nesting box. The Waterton Collection is now in Wakefield Museum. Waterton was an early opponent of pollution. He fought a long-running court case against the owners of a soapworks which had been set up near his estate in 1839, and sent out poisonous chemicals which severely damaged the trees in the park and polluted the lake. He was eventually successful in having the soapworks moved. This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.