Brian Davies

Brian Davies (4 February 1935 – 27 December 2022) was a British animal welfare activist who founded three major international animal welfare organisations, Network for Animals (NFA), Animal Survival International (ASI) and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW. Davies retired from IFAW in 2003 but remained active in Network for Animals and ASI, which was formerly known as the Political Animal Lobby. Early life Davies was born on 4 February 1935 in the Welsh mining village of Tonyrefail. Much of his early childhood was spent with his grandparents while his parents served in the war effort. His father was a rear gunner in the Royal Air Force (RAF), posted to India, and his mother worked in a munitions factory, returning home only on weekends. At the end of the war, when Davies was 11, the family moved to England. He left school at 14, because of ill health, and worked at various manual jobs throughout his youth. Davies met his first wife, Joan, in 1955. The couple emigrated to Canada where they had two children, Nicholas and Toni. When Davies joined the Canadian army in the following year, the family relocated to the town of Oromocto in the province of New Brunswick. Beginnings of a career in animal welfare Davies’ interest in animal welfare began in 1958, when a car struck a dog outside the family's home. Because there was no local vet, Davies contacted the Fredericton SPCA and took the dog to the Fredericton Animal Hospital. This incident resulted in Davies becoming the Oromocto representative for the SPCA on an unofficial and unpaid basis. Upon being offered the job of field secretary for the New Brunswick PCA (NB SPCA) in 1961, Davies resigned from the military. From 1964-1969, Davies served as executive secretary for the NB SPCA, which was considered by some of its prominent members to be lacking in influence and drive, according to the society's minutes. Over the period of Davies’ tenure, he oversaw the group's transformation from one focused primarily on humane education for school children and the inspection of cases of animal cruelty, to an organisation that sought to address animal welfare issues at multiple societal levels.