Neville Fay

Neville Fay was a British arboriculturist, writer and environmental campaigner who spent more than four decades changing how Britain and the wider world cared for trees, particularly the oldest and most ecologically valuable ones. He trained originally as a sociologist, and that grounding in people and communities shaped everything he did afterwards: he treated tree care not as a narrow technical trade but as a matter of ecology, public safety and social justice working together.

Fay's public life began in the mid 1980s, when the famine in Ethiopia and the wider Sahel prompted him and a group of fellow arboriculturists in Bristol to ask what their own industry could usefully offer. The result, founded in 1987, was Tree Aid, a charity built on the idea that planting and tending trees could give communities in some of Africa's harshest landscapes a long term route out of poverty rather than short term relief. Under the vision he helped set in motion, the charity grew to support tree planting and land restoration across sub-Saharan Africa on a very large scale, work that continued long after Fay himself had moved into other roles.

In 1990 he set up Treework Environmental Practice, a Bristol based arboricultural consultancy through which he worked for the rest of his career as a chartered arboriculturist and expert witness in tree related personal injury and environmental cases. He became one of the country's leading authorities on veteran and ancient trees, developing survey methods and management guidance that are still used by bodies responsible for historic parkland and woodland. He was a founding figure and first chair of the Ancient Tree Forum, helped establish the National Tree Safety Group, and later co-founded the Sustainable Soils Alliance, extending his interest in tree health down into the soil ecosystems that support it. He also founded the long running Innovations in Arboriculture seminar series, which for years brought together specialists from around the world to debate new thinking in the field.

Colleagues across the profession described him as a quietly radical figure, someone whose ideas were often, in the words of one tribute, years ahead of mainstream thinking, and who combined technical expertise with a deep personal warmth. He is remembered by those who worked alongside him as a patient mentor and a tireless convenor, as comfortable organising a co-operative housing association in Bristol as he was advising national heritage bodies on the management of centuries old trees.

Neville Fay died on 17 August 2026 at the age of 78, after what colleagues described only as a short illness. His death prompted an outpouring of tributes from across the arboricultural, conservation and environmental sectors, with organisations he founded or helped build, including Tree Aid, the Ancient Tree Forum and the Sustainable Soils Alliance, all publishing statements of condolence and remembrance. He was survived by his children and grandchildren, through whom, as one tribute put it, his influence was expected to continue.