ALTHOUGH best known in Britain as “the richest man in Scotland” and the man who proposed releasing wolves into the Highlands, Paul van Vlissingen’s greater claim to British fame was the example he set as a modernising landowner.

In the 1990s he and groups representing walkers, climbers and the like negotiated an agreement about access to his land. The Letterewe Accord — named for his 80,000-acre estate beside Loch Maree in Wester Ross — became something of a model for subsequent agreements and legislation in the Scottish parliament.

His restoration of Conholt Park, near Andover, made it into one of the greatest downland conservation areas and shooting estates in England, demonstrating that sustainable use and landscape preservation are natural partners.

Van Vlissingen’s reputation extended far beyond Britain, however. In his native Netherlands he embodied the spirit of enterprise, and under his leadership the family company, already substantial, grew to become the largest private business in Europe.

An early and nearly fatal brush with cancer made him a passionate and committed funder of medical research. He supported human population control, but believed it could be attained only through choice and empowering women through education and equality. Although a man with republican leanings, he was nevertheless a loyal and discreet friend of the Dutch Royal Family.

He also made a profound mark in Africa, where he brought a new approach to the management of despoiled and depleted national parks through the application of business skills and financing. He called these parks the “museums of Africa, as important and valuable for our cultural heritage as the Rijksmuseum or the National Gallery”. He funded a growing organisation that manages more than two million hectares of publicly owned, protected areas in seven African countries.

Paul Fentener van Vlissingen was born near Utrecht in 1941 during the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands. He and his sister and two brothers were the latest generation of one of the leading Dutch industrialist families whose fortune was based on shipping coal on the Rhine in the 19th century.

Noting how as a boy Van Vlissingen spent much of his time outdoors, reading voraciously and writing poetry, his parents joked: “We have three children and a gypsy.” After secondary school, he studied economics at the University of Groningen, although he made no secret of the fact that he would preferred to have read philosophy. At the beginning of the 1960s he joined the financial department of SHV, the family company, moving later to the oil arm of the company. At the end of the 1960s he continued his training in the US, with stints working for the Chevron and Amoco oil companies, before returning to a management position in SHV’s oil group.

He joined SHV’s board in May 1974. It was a period of diversification for the company, which was one of the largest employers in The Netherlands.

In 1980 Van Vlissingen was treated for cancer and it was at this time he acquired the Letterewe estate in Scotland.

In 1984 he succeeded his brother, Frits, as chairman of the board at SHV. During his period at the helm, SHV refocused on trading in energy and consumer goods. SHV rapidly became the principal global transporter of liquefied petroleum gases, and developed the Makro chain of cash-and-carry wholesale stores. SHV’s turnover grew from € 5.6 billion (approximately £3.8 billion) to € 15.5 billion between 1984 and 1997. Profit rose from € 57 million to € 184 million. The Makro stores in Europe were sold in 1997. Shortly afterwards two large LPG distribution companies in the UK (Calor Gas) and France were bought.

Van Vlissingen personified the entrepreneurial spirit and aversion to bureaucracy of the families which had merged to form SHV in 1896. As a charismatic chairman he devised many unconventional solutions to business dilemmas.

He was convinced that continual change is the oxygen a company needs for its survival. He was also convinced that both fun and challenges in the working environment were important for all, and he evolved a managerial style which emphasised respect for, and investment in, people. This approach he applied to his companies, to the communities that lived on his estates and to his charities — among them Sabhal Mor Ostaig, the Gaelic college on the Isle of Skye, to which he donated £ 250,000.

In 1998 he stepped down from day-to-day duties at SHV, and finally retired from the company in May 2005, so that he could devote himself, through the African Parks Foundation, to conservation and sustainable development in Africa.

Van Vlissingen was a complex man. Being born into one of The Netherlands’ richest families, he saw wealth as a tool that had to be used, along with the influence and power it provided. In many ways he led a restless life, caused by this constant search for the best application of this inherited wealth. One of his aims was to ensure that future generations of his family would have even more with which to do good. The philosophy of SHV (which he codified and put into practice long before such things became fashionable in business circles) was an intensely personal statement of the responsibilities that the family as owners had to the staff, and all of them to their customers.

He set aside time every day for reading and for writing. He published some of his poetry and his reflections on life, as well as books of photographs taken by his friends of issues and places he found important. He also published scientific work on the management of deer herds on Scottish shooting estates.

He was a very good shot and a thoughtful fisherman, but he gave the impression of gaining more pleasure from watching these sports than from participating.

While he did not parade his wealth, he was a generous and persistent host. Shooting weekends at Conholt and Letterewe were informal and relaxed. The summons to attend — because a rare wild orchid had emerged in a field or he wanted some children to run around the maze — were frequent. Once a science meeting was held for the African Parks Foundation at Conholt, and one of the participants remarked at the very fine wine that was served for what was essentially a business meeting with a group of strangers. Van Vlissingen’s reaction was simple — this was his home and why should he not offer them what he would offer his friends.

Friendship was important to him but it did not always come easily. He could never be trivial; he laughed and joked a great deal (he had a biting sense of humour) but conversations could be very intense.

In 2004 he received an honorary degree from the University of Bradford for his contribution to corporate governance and integrity and his unrelenting investment in people of developing countries. He did not approve much of baubles but this award meant much to him because it was a tribute to his work rather than his existence.

He was a significant supporter of the Countryside Alliance and of the Game Conservancy Trust, with much of its innovative work on song birds and shooting estates being researched at Conholt. He was committed to country sports as a necessary and desirable component of a sustainable rural environment. Above all, however, he believed they were a powerful statement of stewardship and a deep bond between man and the natural world.

From the late 1990s Africa and its wildlife were the main focus of his energies. During a meeting with Nelson Mandela, Van Vlissingen suggested that the problem for almost all of Africa’s protected areas was one of management. Mandela challenged him to prove it.

With South African National Parks, Van Vlissingen established a unique partnership in the public-private management of protected areas. But it soon became clear that South Africa could probably do this for itself; it was the rest of the continent that needed help.

The Africa Parks Foundation, funded by him to the tune of an estimated €100 million, was assembled with virtually no management structure and with decisions taken on the ground. Friends were cajoled into service, new friends were found, and his private office staff were suddenly conscripted into running a conservation body.

The foundation now manages protected areas in countries from Zambia to Ethiopia to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Wildlife conservation and sustainable development are treated as two sides of the same coin. Van Vlissingen was committed to ensuring that these places brought direct and lasting benefits to local communities by being their economic engines; providing jobs and entrepreneurial opportunity, not handouts and aid.

After falling ill during a visit to Garamba National Park, DRC, in 2005, Van Vlissingen received a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer early this year. Seeing no point in prolonging his life by a few months while losing the quality of what little time was left, he declined any treatment except pain relief.

He paid farewell visits to Scotland and England, and to Marakele in South Africa, the park which provided the inspiration behind what was to be his last great enterprise, before returning to The Netherlands.

Van Vlissingen was divorced from his first wife. His partner over the next two decades was the art historian and conservationist, Caroline Tisdall. He is survived by her, their two daughters and by his partner, Suzanne Wolff.

Paul van Vlissingen, businessman, philanthropist and conservationist, was born on March 21, 1941. He died on August 21, 2006, aged 65.