Herbrand Russell, 11th Duke of Bedford

Herbrand Arthur Russell, 11th Duke of Bedford (19 February 1858 – 27 August 1940) was an English politician and peer. He was the son of Francis Russell, 9th Duke of Bedford, and his wife Lady Elizabeth Sackville-West, daughter of George Sackville-West, 5th Earl De La Warr. A noted naturalist, he is considered to be the chief importer of the invasive grey squirrel species to Britain.

Military career He was commissioned into the Grenadier Guards on 7 June 1879 as a Second lieutenant and was promoted to Lieutenant on 1 July 1881. He served with the 2nd Battalion in the Egyptian Campaign of 1882 and was at the Battle of Tel-el-Kebir. Afterwards he served as Aide-de-camp to the Earl of Dufferin, Viceroy of India, 1884–8. He resigned his commission in 1888.

He was commissioned as a Major in the part-time 3rd (Bedfordshire Militia) Battalion, Bedfordshire Regiment, on 1 October 1893, and promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel in command on 22 December 1897. He was granted the honorary rank of Colonel on 11 January 1902 . He retired from the command when the Militia was converted into the Special Reserve in June 1908 and was appointed Aide-de-Camp to the King. for which he was Mentioned in despatches and created a Knight Commander of the British Empire (Military). the Duke was instrumental in saving the milu (or Père David's deer), which was already extinct by 1900 in its native China. He acquired the few remaining deer from European zoos and nurtured a herd of them at Woburn Abbey. He gifted Himalayan tahr to the New Zealand government in 1903; of the three males and three females, five survived the journey and were released near the Hermitage Hotel at Mount Cook Village. He sent a further shipment in 1909 of six males and two females. Himalayan tahr are near-threatened in their native India and Nepal, but are so numerous in New Zealand's Southern Alps that they are hunted recreationally. A statue of a Himalayan tahr was unveiled in May 2014 at Lake Pukaki and dedicated by Henrietta, Dowager Duchess of Bedford.

In the 1890s he was responsible for the import of a number of North American grey squirrels which he introduced to Woburn Park. He also gifted many to other estates across the UK and introduced a group to Regents Park, the ancestors of the majority of squirrels in London today. The species proved to be highly invasive and has almost entirely wiped out the native red squirrel in most of the country.

Bedford was also interested in horticulture, through the orchards at the Woburn estate, and along with Spencer Pickering performed early work into what would now be described as allelopathy between different plant species, the results of which can be found in academic publications.

He was also a trustee of the British Museum and president of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund as Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE (Military)) in 1919, and as a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1908. He was made an Honorary Doctor of Law (LL.D.) by Edinburgh University in 1906. He was made an honorary Freeman of Holborn in 1931. He received the gold medal of the Zoological Society of London in 1936.

His grandson Ian Russell, 13th Duke of Bedford describes him as follows: "A selfish, forbidding man, with a highly developed sense of public duty and ducal responsibility, he lived a cold, aloof existence, isolated from the outside world by a mass of servants, sycophants and an eleven-mile wall." In conjunction with his son Hastings Russell, 12th Duke of Bedford, he developed plans to protect the Bedford fortune from the British tax regime. However, he died too soon for these to come to fruition and the only result was to involve his grandson in enormous difficulties in obtaining access to the family properties.

Herbrand and Hastings Russell feature largely in the 13th Duke's memoir, A Silver-Plated Spoon (World Books, 1959).

Ancestry