The son of the explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott and the sculptor Kathleen Scott, Peter Scott was one of the most versatile Englishmen of his generation, being an accomplished artist, naturalist, international sportsman, conservationist and man of action.

He started to paint geese and ducks while an undergraduate at Cambridge and then served with RNVR in the Second World War, where he was awarded the DSC and Bar and was thrice Mentioned in Dispatches. In 1946 he formed the Severn Wildfowl Trust, which was responsible, among others achievements, for the rescue from extinction of the Hawaiian Goose. He went on to become chairman of International WWF and subsequently of the Fauna Preservation Society.