He served as Chairman and later President of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds; President of the Gloucestershire Naturalists' Society; President of the Royal Agricultural Society of England; President of the British Pig Association; and a Vice-President of the Nature in Art Trust. Barber was knighted in the 1984 Birthday Honours and was created a life peer as Baron Barber of Tewkesbury, "of Gotherington in the County of Gloucestershire", on 12 August 1992.