Charlie Newington-Bridges lives in Monmouthshire between the rivers Wye and Usk.

He attended Oxford University and then worked in investment banking for fourteen years at Dresdner Kleinwort Benson, JP Morgan and ABN Amro. He was latterly a director of ABN’s equities division.

He retrained at law/bar school and now practises as a barrister specialising in commercial, environmental and charity law.

He is the chairman and a trustee of the Wye and Usk Foundation. He has also been a board member/trustee and vice chair of an education charity.

He has skied to the North Pole, run the Marathon des Sables – a 150 miles race across the Sahara – and has also run the length of both the Wye and the Usk rivers raising £40,000 in the process for environmental charities. He is a passionate, but mostly unsuccessful trout and salmon fisherman.

His view is that the environmental challenges we face are vast, but the rivers and related biodiversity loss is something that can be addressed by a combination of dialogue, energy, self-help and regulation.”