First ever Inaugural Clive Minton Medallion awarded to Dr Roz Jessop
The Clive Minton medallion is a newly established award for a VWSG member in recognition of their outstanding contribution to the group inline with the group’s objectives. The medallion has been awarded this year to Dr Rosalind Jessop.
Roz has been an active member of the VWSG for almost as long as it has been in existence. Whilst field activities have been reduced in recent years, in the early days of the group she was always in the field. Roz became a qualified cannon-netter very early in the piece and was attending catches regularly for decades. Roz has been leading catches in her own right, leading processing teams and training many people in the appropriate way to handle and measure birds and how to age birds through assessing moult.
Her knowledge on catching and processing waders is enormous and her insights and experience are often called upon when in the field and to call on when planning catches. She is happy to share her knowledge and her dry wit make her a valuable member of any team. Flagging parties were mostly held at her house in the early days with people camped out all over her house for the weekend to get the thousands of flags done that were needed.
Roz has carried an enormous backroom workload over several decades. These roles have included:
- Committee member since 1993.
- Editor of The Bulletin for 23 years (1994-2017).
- Keeper and maintenance of the oystercatcher database before David Trudgen took it on.
- Since state permits became more complicated over the last ten years, Roz has handled all document preparation, renewal of permits and ensured our reporting requirements have been met. We have scientific, ethics and public land owner permits within each of the three states we catch in, plus the project permit with ABBBS and a permit to catch threatened birds listed under the EPBC Act. Without her input to this, we could not have functioned. This has been a huge workload and responsibility that she has carried. Roz has been Deputy Chair of the VWSG since 2004 giving stability to the group.
- Regular email communications to members have been channelled through Roz for decades.
Roz has made these significant contributions to the VWSG continuously over the period of her involvement, all the while working full time. Roz has been a co-author of a myriad of papers and has made many presentations on waders, particularly of oystercatchers, over the years to a range of groups and audiences.
Roz makes a very worthy winner of the Clive Minton Medallion as there is no doubt that she has made an outstanding contribution to the group.
