Niall D McKillop: November 7, 1947 - September 6, 2024

He came to Fort William in the 1980s and set up the Lochaber Lady tourist boat on Loch Linnhe for trips around the seal colony.

 

In 2000 he married his long-term partner, Sarah.

 

Niall returned to work in the North Sea oil industry, but his passion was Highland wildlife.

 

His naval education meant he had missed out on university, but he became an avid reader on a wide range of topics from wildlife, history, art, poetry and politics.

 

He was generous with his books and loved to share his latest passions.

 

His communication skills and intelligence meant he was quick-witted, popular and engaging. He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the birds, mammals and fish of the Highlands, and became a keen observer of their behaviours.

 

He was an avid fly fisher for salmon and trout on the Shiel, Guinard and in Uist.

 

He used his natural world observations to publish Rondo One-Eye in 2000, which gave a seal’s view of the world and human interactions. He had just completed a film script called the Otters of Bonnet Bay before his sudden death.

 

He was active politically and stood for the first intake of Holyrood as a co-founder of the Alliance Party to represent the Highland rural voice against the central belt policies.

 

Later, his generational “baby boomer” upbringing with a Highland father, English mother and schooling in Wales made him an active Unionist on social media.

 

He was passionate about saving the wild Atlantic Salmon from extinction, which he felt was under threat from the Norwegian salmon farming industry.

 

He was enthralled by the natural life cycle of the King of Fish, which involves migrating from Highland rivers to Greenland and returning to their birthplace river to breed again.

 

He wrote a brilliant poem about the wild Atlantic Salmon’s migration journey called the Last Leaper of Gruinard.

 

McKillop uses the metaphor of the anthrax-poisoned island as the proxy of the fish farm at the mouth of the river Gruinard.

 

He was very active in the Salmon Aquaculture Reform Network and this poem was written just before his death to promote their cause.

 

His professional skills in navigation, his deep and empathetic knowledge of the natural world and his poetry show that he was a true polymath.

 

He died suddenly with so much more to contribute and leaves his wife Sarah and mother Barbara. His sister Fiona predeceased him.

James Douglas