A Welsh biologist once criticised for stealing eggs from the nests of the rarest bird in the world has been awarded the ‘Nobel prize’ of conservation after his controversial methods saved nine species from extinction.

Professor Carl Jones won the 2016 Indianapolis Prize - the highest accolade in the field of animal conservation - for his 40 years of work in Mauritius, where he saved an endangered kestrel from becoming the next Dodo.

When the 61-year-old first travelled to the east African island in the 1970s he was told to close down a project to save the Mauritius kestrel. At the time there were just four left in the wild, making it the rarest bird on Earth.

However he stayed, implementing the controversial techniques of captive breeding and a strategy known as ‘double-clutching’, which involved snatching eggs from the birds’ nests and hatching them under incubators, prompting the mothers to lay another set of eggs in the wild.

A decade later, the number of Mauritius kestrels had soared to over 300 and today there are around 400 in the wild.