Edward Percy Stebbing

[close] Edward Percy Stebbing FRSE FRGS FZS (1872 - 1960) was a pioneering English forester and forest entomologist in India. He was educated at St. Paul's School, London and studied at the Royal Engineering College and Coopers Hill College. He then studied at the University of Edinburgh and graduated MA. From 1900 to 1910 he worked as Forest Entomologist and Zoologist for the Indian Forest Service. In 1910 he returned to the University of Edinburgh as Professor of Forestry.

In the First World War he was a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Flying Corps. He served on the Serbian Front in Macedonia, taking part in the Battle of Kajmakčalan and acting as transport officer to the Scottish Women's Hospitals.

In 1923 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Stebbing was among the first to warn of desertification and wrote on "The encroaching Sahara". He suggested that this was man-made and this led to a joint Anglo-French forestry mission from December 1936 to February 1937 that toured northern Nigeria and Niger to assess the danger of desertification.