He was Chief Scientist for the Nature Conservancy Council at the Monks Wood Experimental Station, Abbots Ripton, Huntingdon, retiring in 1989.
[1][2] Ratcliffe was the first person to discover the link between the use by farmers of pesticides—such as DDT and Dieldrin—and the decline of British populations of birds of prey, particularly the peregrine falcon.
[2] He was instrumental in persuading the UK government to end the tax advantages available for planting non-native conifer forests on Scottish peat bogs, which was threatening the internationally important large wetland area of Caithness and Sutherland known as the Flow Country.
[4] Some, including Rachel Carson in her book Silent Spring, have interpreted the study as establishing a causal link between DDT contamination and thinning of egg shells in raptors.
Among his many other [5] studies of the topic are papers on the effect on specific bird species, such as the peregrine falcon,[6] the raven,[7] In these studies he developed "Ratcliffe's Index," considered "a reliable measure of relative shell thickness" [8] Derek Ratcliffe's most important publications include: