Roger Bills

Conradie, Werner, Grieneisen, Michael L. & Hassapakis, Craig L., 2019, Compilation of personal tributes to William Roy Branch (1946 - 2018): a loving husband and father, a good friend, and a mentor, Amphibian & Reptile Conservation (e 186) 13 (2) : -

Roger Bills

South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity, South Africa

I first met Bill in Marromeu, central Mozambique. We were part of a team lead by Jonathan Timberlake looking at the biota of the lower Zambezi’s delta region. I had driven up from Grahamstown with a bakkie and trailer, and had slept in the car over several nights due to poor road conditions and slow progress. Basically, I was exhausted. This did not get me any respite from Bill’s sharp humour and I had to quickly shape up.

For me the trip was tremendous―there was water everywhere despite it being the dry season, and an abundance of fishes and the fauna was mostly new to me. For most of the other zoologists it was not the best season and consequently a bit frustrating. Bill and I got on from the start and we spent time out in the dry fields with a large bulldozer that was flattening termite mounds looking for snakes and lungfishes and several days on a boat going down the Zambezi.

The boat trip down the Zambezi was supposed to be an overnight affair―down the Zambezi to the mouth, a channel through mangroves to one of the delta’s southern braids and up to the small village of Malingapanzi. Unfortunately we missed the tide and left late, and went down river on an incoming tide. It took us the whole day to get down to the mouth where we camped at a fishing village overnight. We expected to get going at first light but the local fishermen stole our rudder as they wanted payment for camping. It took our Mozambique counterparts the whole morning of negotiating and refitting the rudder before we could leave. The time however was well spent: Bill went fishing (he was a good angler) and caught our only Glossogobius giuris for the trip, and I caught a load of mud-skippers in the mangrove flats. Our delay meant we missed the tide again and going up the southern channel to Malingapanzi was against the outgoing tide. We got there late on the second day―Bill had caught one puff adder. He wasn’t very happy and did not return by boat the following day.

From all my experiences with Bill, the impressive thing about him was his resourcefulness in the field, whether collecting by himself or soliciting samples from locals, he managed to get incredible numbers of samples. Returning to camps in the evenings would invariably find Bill at a table covered with specimens that he would be fixing, photographing and taking tissue samples from. He spent long hours doing this work. On one trip to a sand mining project near Pebane, Mozambique, we fell afoul of this. Bill had been there the week before and the locals were used to giving reptiles they had caught to passing vehicles. On our drive from the airstrip to the exploration camp we were oblivious of this. After the second snake came through the window in a flimsy plastic bag, we wound up our windows and did not stop anymore!

Bill was an incredible intellect, a world-class scientist but far more importantly a great guy. It was a privilege to have spent time with him, my life is richer for it.