Ionia County MI Archives Obituaries.....Mitchell, Pamela Ann April 27, 2008
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Nan Wheaton wheaton1624@yahoo.com September 14, 2013, 2:06 am

Lakewood News - Sat. May 31, 2008


The death occurred on Pamela Ann Mitchell on 27th April 2008. Pamela, the 
second daughter of Forrest and Verna Mitchell of Lake Odessa, passed away at 
her home in Spratton, Northamptonshire, England, Where she had resided for the 
previous 30 years, a victim of an aggressive form of cancer.

Pamela Mitchell was born on 25th February 1946 in Lansing, Michigan and 
graduated from Lakewood High School in 1964. She moved to London, England in 
1971, forming a partnership with Ian Gauld, whom she married in 1976 in Ionia 
County Courthouse, and with whom she lived  until her death this year. 

Pamela’s live was far from mundane, and on her death her family received 
condolences from people on every inhabited continent on Earth. After the usual 
struggles a wife has to support her family, during which Pam became the first 
female holder of an allotment garden in Spratton. Pamela spent her life 
immersed in the work of her husband. She was the co-author of several peer 
reviewed scientific papers on the Taxonomy of parasitic insects, co-author of a 
Handbook for the identification of British Insects, and perhaps most 
importantly, co-author of two large books (300+pp) on the taxonomy and biology 
of African and tropical South-East Asian night-flying parasitic wasps. She has 
described more than 300 species as new to science, and her contribution to 
insect science in reorganized by the fact that she has both a Indo-Papuan genus 
of wasps, Pamophion, and a Costa Rican species, Arotes pammae ,named after her. 

Pamela was an active field worker who assiduously collected insects in a 
variety of countries around the world, and prior to her death she had given 
more than 100,000 insects to the British Museum (Natural History) in London. 
She endured considerable privation at times, living in jungle shacks and 
enduring massive reactions to biting insects to reach remote places. Her 
susceptibility to insect bites never deterred Pamela from climbing the next 
ridge or exploring a new habitat. She was with a group that successfully fought 
a forest fire in northwestern Costa Rica, and whose herculean efforts saved 
Santa Rosa national Park. 

In later life, Pamela was a vigorous proponent of nature conservation in a 
variety of ways. She was a well-known figure in London attending a multiplicity 
of social occasions promoting the UK’s participation in the U.N. Convention on 
Biological Diversity. Her ready sense of humour and her knowledge of tropical 
entomology made her a frequent guest at leading social functions. But Pamela 
was best known for her work in Costa Rica, where she was a visiting researcher 
who helped develop the National Biodiversity Institute, INBio, and taught 
insect science to many students, promoting bio-literacy in the park service. 
Her kindness to students was near legendary, protecting and nurturing young 
people from the developing world in her. 



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