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Dr. Richard Alley

Rick Bass

Rick Bass is the author of twenty-one books of fiction and nonfiction, including The Ninemile Wolves, The Roadless Yaak: Reflections and Observations About One of Our Last Wilderness Areas, The Diezmo, The Lives of Rocks, and most recently, Why I Came West: A Memoir. His stories have been awarded the Pushcart Prize and the O. Henry Award and have been collected in The Best American Short Stories. Bass is a board member of the Yaak Valley Forest Council, Round River Conservation Studies, Cabinet Resource Group, and Montana Wilderness Association. For nearly twenty years he has been active in the attempts to help protect the last roadless lands of the Yaak Valley—the lowest elevation, wettest habitat, and narrowest bottleneck of the Y2Y section of the United States. Known as Montana’s only rainforest, the Yaak still doesn’t have a single acre of designated wilderness.

Rick Bass contributed "The Courage of Hope" to Yellowstone to Yukon: Freedom to Roam (Braided River, 2005).

Frances Beinecke

Frances Beinecke is president of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), one of the nation's most influential environmental action groups, which uses law, science, and the support of 1.2 million members and online activists to ensure a safe and healthy environment for all living things. Beinecke has been with the NRDC for more than thirty years, serving as executive director from 1998 through 2005. She received her bachelor's degree from Yale College and a master's degree from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Beinecke co-chairs the Leadership Council of the School of Forestry, serves on the advisory board of Yale's Institute for Biospheric Studies and the board of the World Resources Institute, and is a member of the steering committee of the Energy Future Coalition.

Frances Beinecke contributed "A Climate for Change: Next Steps in Solving Global Warming" to The Last Polar Bear: Facing the Truth of a Warming World (Braided River, 2008).

Stephen Brown

Stephen Brown, Ph.D., is the director of the Shorebird Conservation Research Program at the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences and has studied shorebirds and their wetland habitats for twenty years. He received his doctorate from Cornell University, where he studied restoration of wetland bird habitats. Brown is the lead author of “The United States Shorebird Conservation Plan” as well as more than twenty peer-reviewed articles on shorebirds and wetland management. He conducts field studies on distribution and abundance of shorebirds in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and collaborates on other shorebird research and conservation projects throughout the country. Based in Manomet, Massachusetts, the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences is one of the nation’s oldest independent environmental research organizations. Manomet uses science to bring people together and guide them in the development of practical strategies that improve conditions for wildlife, habitats, and people.

Dr. Stephen Brown is the editor for Arctic Wings: Birds of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (Braided River, 2006). He contributed "Shorebirds: Imperiled Arctic Ambassadors" to the same title. To listen to one of his reports from the field, click here.

Richard Carstensen

Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter, the thirty-ninth president of the United States (1977-1981), advocated and signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary in 2005. Carter has consistently opposed drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as fundamentally incompatible with wilderness. In 1982 he founded the Carter Center, a nongovernmental organization guided by a commitment to human rights and the alleviation of human suffering. He won the Nobel Prize in 2002 for his decades of effort in finding peaceful solutions to international conflicts, advancing democracy and human rights, and promoting economic and social development. He is the recipient of numerous other awards, including the highest awards of the National Wildlife Federation, The Wilderness Society, the National Audubon Society, and the National Parks Conservation Association.

President Carter contributed forewords to Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land (Braided River, 2003) and Arctic Wings: Birds of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (Braided River, 2006).

Gino Casassa

Born and raised in Chile, Gino Casassa received a hydraulics engineering degree from Universidad de Chile in 1984. During his early university years he became actively involved in mountaineering and developed a greater interest in frozen—rather than liquid—water. Consequently, he completed a Ms.Sc. in Geophysics/Glaciology in 1989 at Hokkaido University in Japan. In 1993, Casassa received his Ph.D. from Ohio State University, and from 1994 to 2002 he worked at Universidad de Magallanes in Punta Arenas, Chile, as an associate professor and the director for Antarctic Programs.

Since 2002, he has been a researcher of glaciology and climate change at Centro de Estudios Científicos (CECS). He is currently a member of the Steering Committee of the Program on Antarctica and the Global Climate System (AGCS) of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) and the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU); a member of the Scientific Steering Group of the Project Climate and Cryosphere (CLiC) of the World Climate Research Project (WCRP) and SCAR; and vice president of the International Association of Cryosphere Sciences (IACS). He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005 and participated as lead coordinating author of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was co-awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

Dr. Casassa is an essayist for Planet Ice (Braided River, 2009).

Douglas H. Chadwick

Wildlife biologist Douglas H. Chadwick has traveled the globe reporting on wildlife and conservation, from the Congo headwaters to Siberia to the Great Barrier Reef. He is the critically acclaimed author of The Fate of the Elephant, A Beast the Color of Winter, and True Grizz, as well as The Company We Keep: America’s Endangered Species and Enduring America. Over two hundred of his articles have appeared in such publications as National Geographic, to which he is a frequent contributor, Audubon, Defenders of Wildlife, and Smithsonian Magazine. A longtime conservationist, Chadwick spent seven years studying mountain goats and other wildlife in Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness and Glacier National Park. He lives with his family in northwestern Montana.

Doug Chadwick contributed the introduction—"Y2Y: The Power of Connections"—to Yellowstone to Yukon: Freedom to Roam (Braided River, 2005). He is also an essayist for Salmon in the Trees: Life in the Tongass Rainforest (Braided River, 2010). Click here to read his Patagonia "enviro essay" on the Yellowstone-to-Yukon ecoregion.

Yvon Chouinard

Yvon Chouinard, the founder of the outdoor equipment company Patagonia, is one of the pioneers of big wall and ice climbing and the author of Climbing Ice, the book that introduced modern ice-climbing technique to America. He is also an avid surfer, kayaker, fisherman, and falconer, as well as an outspoken proponent of mixing environmentalism and sound business practice.

Yvon Chouinard is an essayist for Planet Ice (Braided River, 2009).

Broughton Coburn

After graduating from Harvard College in 1973, Broughton Coburn fulfilled a destiny with the Himalayas—where he has worked for two of the past three decades. He has authored several books; developed documentary films; and overseen environmental conservation and development efforts for the World Bank, UNESCO, World Wildlife Fund, and other agencies. He has also contributed to New Age, Rock and Ice, The Denver Post Magazine, Co-Evolution Quarterly, Worldview, and other publications.

In 1997, Coburn was awarded the American Alpine Club's Literary Achievement Award for his body of work. His third book, Everest: Mountain Without Mercy, has sold over 400,000 copies—an unusual showing for a large format illustrated book.

In April 2001, Coburn’s fifth book—a collaboration with Jamling Tenzing Norgay titled Touching My Father's Soul: A Sherpa's Journey to The Top of Everest—reached number seven on the BookSense list and number twenty-four on the New York Times list; was granted an Honorary Mention at the 2001 Banff Mountain Book Festival; and was a finalist for the coveted 2001 Books for a Better Life Award. Two of his other books—Nepali Aama: Life Lessons of a Himalayan Woman and Aama in America: A Pilgrimage of the Heart—trace the life of an elderly Nepalese subsistence farmer and follow her on a 12,000-mile odyssey in search of the soul of the United States.

In addition to lecturing, Broughton Coburn is now editing a large format book on the Himalaya and is writing a series of historical fiction titles set in the Himalaya in the 1960s and '70s. He is also the special projects director for the American Himalayan Foundation, a charitable organization based in San Francisco that brings education, health care, and environmental conservation to villagers like Aama.

Broughton Coburn is an essayist for Planet Ice (Braided River, 2009). To learn more about his work, visit http://broughtoncoburn.com.

Jim & Jamie Dutcher

Jim Dutcher is an Emmy Award–winning cinematographer and filmmaker. His work includes the National Geographic special A Rocky Mountain Beaver Pond, and ABC World of Discovery’s two highest-rated films, Cougar: Ghost of the Rockies and Wolf: Return of a Legend.

Jamie Dutcher, his wife and co-producer, won an Emmy Award for sound mixing with her carefully collected sounds of the Sawtooth wolves. She is a former employee of the National Zoo in Washington, DC.

Together, the Dutchers created the Discovery Channel’s most successful wildlife documentary: Wolves at Our Door. Their most recent film, Living with Wolves, was produced by the Discovery Channel and continues the story of the Sawtooth wolf pack that became a part of their lives. Through their films, books, and numerous events and media appearances, the Dutchers have inadvertently become lightning rods for one of the most hotly debated environmental issues in North America today.

For more information on the Dutchers and their work, visit www.livingwithwolves.org. 

Gretel Ehrlich

Gretel Ehrlich was born on a horse ranch near Santa Barbara, California, and was educated at Bennington College and UCLA film school. She worked in film for ten years and began writing full time in 1978 after the death of a loved one. She had been filming on a 250,000-acre sheep and cattle ranch in northern Wyoming at the time-and there she stayed. The book that resulted was The Solace of Open Spaces, which won the Harold D. Vurcell Award for Distinguished Prose from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Her twelve subsequent books—including a memoir penned in 1994 after she was struck by lightning—have been published to critical acclaim. Ehrlich’s essays, short stories, and poems have been included in many anthologies, including Best Essays of the Century, Best American Essays, Best Spiritual Writing, Best Travel Writing, and The Nature Reader. Her work has also been published in Harper’s, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times op-ed page, The Washington Post, Time Magazine, Life, National Geographic Adventure, National Geographic Traveler, Outside, Audubon, Anteaus, Architectural Digest, and the Shambala Sun, among many others.

Her awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, a Whiting Foundation Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1991, she collaborated with British choreographer Siobhan Davies on a ballet that opened in London’s South Bank Theatre.

Ehrlich divides her time between Calfiornia and Wyoming.

Gretel Ehrlich is an essayist for Planet Ice (Braided River, 2009). For more on her work, click here.

Jeff Fair

Jeff Fair is a wildlife biologist with four books to his credit, including Moose for Kids and The Great American Bear. His essays have appeared in Alaska Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, the Boston Globe, Equinox, Ranger Rick, Audubon Magazine, and Appalachia, where he is a contributing editor. In 1998 he received the National Wildlife Federation’s Farrand/Strohm Writing Award, and in 2001 he was selected for the Alaska State Council on the Arts’ first Tumblewords roster.

Jeff Fair contributed "Angels in the Mist" to Arctic Wings: Birds of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (Braided River, 2006).

Daniel Glick

Daniel Glick is the author of Monkey Dancing: A Father, Two Kids, and a Journey to the Ends of the Earth, a Colorado Book Award-winning account of the trip he took with his son and daughter to places of great ecological wonder that are threatened by human development. A correspondent for Newsweek for thirteen years, Glick co-authored the 2004 National Geographic cover story entitled "Global Warming: Bulletins from a Warmer World" that won an Overseas Press Club award. He has written for numerous other magazines, including Smithsonian, Outside, Rolling Stone, the Washington Post Magazine, and Harpers. Glick also wrote Powder Burn: Arson, Money and Mystery on Vail Mountain, an investigation into the most infamous act of ecoterrorism in U.S. history. In 2001, he was awarded a Ted Scripps Fellowship at the University of Colorado, one of five journalists chosen annually to spend an academic year researching environmental law, policy, and science. In 2006, he spent four months as a Knight International Journalism Fellow in Algeria with his two children.

Dan Glick contributed "Fever Pitch: Understanding the Planet's Warming Symptoms" to The Last Polar Bear (Braided River, 2008). For more information, visit www.danielglick.net.

Karsten Heuer

Recipient of the 2003 Wilburforce Foundation Conservation Leadership Award, Karsten Heuer has spent the better part of the last decade studying and, in some cases, actually following wide-ranging and threatened wildlife on foot. He has worked as a wildlife biologist and park warden in the Madikwe Game Reserve in South Africa; in Canada’s Yukon Territory; and in Banff and Jasper national parks in the Canadian Rockies. Accompanied by his wife, Leanne Allison, and his border collie, he walked 2,200 miles from Yellowstone to the Yukon in 1998 and 1999, and another 1,000 miles to Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge with the 123,000-member Porcupine Caribou herd in 2003. He is the author of Walking the Big Wild: From Yellowstone to the Yukon on the Grizzly Bear’s Trail (The Mountaineers Books, 2004) and Being Caribou (The Mountaineers Books, 2005). He is currently working on a third book: Finding Farley. Heuer lives with his wife and son in Canmore, Alberta.

Karsten Heuer contributed "The Wilder Side of a Wild Walk" to Yellowstone to Yukon: Freedom to Roam (Braided River, 2005). To visit his "Necessary Journeys" website, click here.

Denver Holt

Denver Holt is the founder of Montana’s Owl Research Institute and Ninepipes Wildlife Research and Education Center. Holt conducts fieldwork on many different species of owls, including Snowy Owls on Alaska’s North Slope. His work has been featured on CNN Science News, Audubon’s Up-Close series, PBS’s Bird Watch, David Attenborough’s The Life of Birds, and National Geographic.

Denver Holt contributed "Through Arctic Eyes" to Arctic Wings: Birds of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (Braided River, 2006). To learn more about the Owl Research Institute, click here.

Sarah James

Sarah James is a Gwich’in activist who lives in Arctic Village, just south of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She has spoken across the country against development in the refuge and spent three months in 2005 at a vigil in Washington, D.C., drumming, singing, dancing, and praying with other Native Americans to educate the public about human rights issues in the refuge. In 2002 James was co-winner of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Award with two other Gwich’in elders.

Sarah James contributed "Cultural Reflections" to Arctic Wings: Birds of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (Braided River, 2006). To learn more about the Gwich'in Steering Committee, click here.

Nick Jans

Nick Jans is a longtime contributing editor to Alaska Magazine and a member of USA Today's board of editorial contributors. He has written seven books, including The Grizzly Maze: Timothy Treadwell's Fatal Obsession with Alaska's Bears, A Place Beyond: Finding Home in Arctic Alaska, and Tracks of the Unseen. He has published more than two hundred magazine articles and won a number of literary awards, most recently a 2006 Ben Franklin Award. He is also a professional photographer who specializes in wildlife and bush Alaska. Jans lived and taught school for twenty years in remote Native communities and currently makes his home in Juneau with his wife, Sherrie, three dogs, two parrots, and a varying array of critters that need a hand.

Nick Jans contributed "Living with Oil: The Real Price" to The Last Polar Bear: Facing the Truth of a Warming World (Braided River, 2008). He is also an essayist for Planet Ice (Braided River, 2009).

James Johnston

James Johnston is a native Oregonian who lived in Washington State during 2005 and 2006 while completing the photography for Columbia Highlands. He is an avid hiker, backpacker, fly fisherman, and photographer who has covered more than a thousand miles of trail in the Pacific Northwest every year since he was old enough to drive. He currently lives in Eugene, Oregon. More of his photography can be found at www.northforkphotos.com.

Ken Kaufman

Kenn Kaufman, best known for his Focus series of bird guides, is one of the most popular birding author in the country. He is field editor for Audubon Magazine and a regular contributor to numerous birding magazines. A devoted conservationist, he works vigorously to promote the appreciation and protection of nature. Other books in his field guide series include the Kaufman Focus Guide to Butterflies and the Kaufman Focus Guide to Mammals. He also wrote the Peterson Field Guide to Advanced Birding, Kingbird Highway, and Lives of North American Birds.

Kenn Kaufman contributed "After an Arctic Season" to Arctic Wings: Birds of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (Braided River, 2006).

Frank Keim

Frank Keim is a retired high school teacher who taught for twenty-one years in four Yupik villages in the Lower Yukon School District in Southwest Alaska, at the mouth of the Yukon River. He lived for many years in Latin America, where he was a Peace Corps Volunteer and an anthropology instructor at the University of Cuenca. Keim is on the Alaska State Board of Trustees of the National Audubon Society and regularly contributes articles to local and regional publications. He is a nature poet and wood-carver. He learned his love of birds and walking from his father when he was very young, and he hopes his own children and grandchildren will learn the same from him.

Frank Keim contributed "Wings Over Winter Snow" to Arctic Wings: Birds of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (Braided River, 2006).

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has worked on environmental issues across the Americas. He was named one of Time Magazine’s “Heroes for the Planet” for his success in helping Riverkeeper lead the fight to restore the Hudson River. The watershed agreement he negotiated on behalf of environmentalists and New York City watershed consumers is regarded as an international model in stakeholder consensus negotiations and sustainable development. Kennedy serves as senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, chief prosecuting attorney for the Hudson Riverkeeper, and president of Waterkeeper Alliance. Among his published books are Crimes Against Nature and The Riverkeepers. His articles have appeared in, among others, The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, The Nation, Outside, and The Village Voice. Kennedy is a licensed master falconer, and as often as possible he pursues a life-long enthusiasm for whitewater paddling.

Robert Kennedy Jr. contributed the epilogue to Yellowstone to Yukon: Freedom to Roam (Braided River, 2005). For more information, visit www.robertfkennedyjr.com.

Ted Kerasote

Ted Kerasote’s work on natural history, wildlife, outdoor recreation, and indigenous people has been published in dozens of periodicals and anthologies, including Audubon, Outside, Men’s Journal, National Geographic Traveler, Salon.com, The New York Times Book Review, The Nature of Nature, The Best American Science and Nature Writing, and The Best Adventure and Survival Stories. He is also the author of five books. One of them, Bloodties: Nature, Culture, and the Hunt, has been reprinted many times and remains one of the most frequently cited works on the ethics of hunting. Two of his books, Out There: In the Wild in a Wired Age and Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog, have won the National Outdoor Book Award for literature. Kerasote lives in Kelly, Wyoming.

Ted Kerasote contributed "Refuge" to Yellowstone to Yukon: Freedom to Roam (Braided River, 2005). For more information, visit www.kerasote.com.

Harvey Locke

Harvey Locke grew up in southern Alberta. His family, among the area's earliest European settlers, has been in Bow Valley for seven generations. Locke first visited Yellowstone in 1979 and knew intuitively there was a connection between it and the Canadian Rockies. This interest led him to help create the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, for which he now serves as strategic advisor. He also serves as program advisor to Tides Canada Foundation; senior advisor, conservation, to the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society; advisor to the Canadian Boreal Initiative; director emeritus of the Wildlands Project; member of the World Commission on Protected Areas; member of the executive committee of the Eighth World Wilderness Congress; and trustee of the Eleanor Luxton Historical Foundation. In 1999, Time Canada named him one of Canada's leaders for the twenty-first century.

Locke contributed "Y2Y Today: Where We Are and Where We Go from Here"—with Gary Tabor—to Yellowstone to Yukon: Freedom to Roam (Braided River, 2005).

James Manfull.

James Manfull contributed the introduction-"A Journey through Memory"-to Living with Wolves (Braided River, 2005).

Brad Matsen

Brad Matsen has been writing books, documentary films scripts, and magazine articles for thirty years. His latest book is Descent: The Heroic Discovery of the Abyss, the story of William Beebe, Otis Barton, and their courageous Bathysphere expeditions in the 1930s. He also contributed the introduction to Rapture of the Deep: The Art of Ray Troll, and Go Wild in New York City, a book about urban ecology for kids.

Matsen's other books include Raptors, Fossils, Fins and Fangs, Planet Ocean: A Story of Life, the Sea, and Dancing to the Fossil Record, and Shocking Fish Tales, all illustrated by Ray Troll; The Incredible Ocean Adventure series; Reaching Home: Pacific Salmon, Pacific People; Northwest Coast: Essays on the Territory Between the Columbia River and Cook Inlet; and Deep Sea Fishing.

He has also been a creative producer and writer for several television series developed by Sea Studios/National Geographic television.

His articles and photographs have appeared in Audubon, Mother Jones, Oceans, WoodenBoat, Whole Earth Review, Alaska, and dozens of other magazines and newspapers. He has spent most of his life in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, also working as a charter pilot, commercial fisherman, and merchant seaman. He now splits his time between Seattle and New York.

Brad Matsen is an essayist for Salmon in the Trees: Life in the Tongass Rainforest (Braided River, 2010).

Peter Matthiessen

Peter Matthiessen is the acclaimed author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction. His subjects include vanishing cultures, oppressed people, and endangered wildlife and landscapes, and his work is essentially based on his wilderness travels. His nonfiction books include The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes, Tigers in the Snow, The Tree Where Man Was Born, which was nominated for the National Book Award, and The Snow Leopard, which won it. While writing In the Spirit of Crazy Horse and Indian Country, Matthiessen turned his attention toward the history, culture, and political plight of American Indians. In 1990, he was made a laureate of the Global Honor Roll of the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP). In 1991, Matthiessen was honored with the John Steinbeck Award, which recognizes contributions to literature and humanity. He has also received lifetime achievement awards from the Heinz Foundation, Lannan Foundation, and the Society of Conservation Biologists, and the Gold Medal in Natural History from the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences. Matthiessen is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Matthiessen contributed "In the Great Country" to Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land (Braided River, 2003).

Fran Mauer

Fran Mauer moved to Alaska more than thirty years ago to attend graduate school at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, where he earned a master of science degree in zoology in 1974. He began his career which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as an entry-level wildlife biologist. From 1976 to 1980, he worked as staff biologist with the proposed Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which ultimately established new national parks, wildlife refuges, wilderness areas, and wild rivers in Alaska. After twenty-one years as the wildlife biologist on staff of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, he retired in 2002. Mauer’s fieldwork in the Arctic Refuge focused on study and management of the Porcupine caribou herd, Dall sheep, moose, wolverines, golden eagles, and peregrine falcons. He has provided information to numerous media sources on the issue of proposed oil development in the Arctic Refuge, and has frequently spoken to the irreplaceable values that are at stake.

Fran Mauer contributed "Our Geography of Hope" to Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land (Braided River, 2003) and "Hunters of the Arctic Sky" to Arctic Wings: Birds of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (Braided River, 2006).

Annette McGivney

Annette McGivney is the Southwest Editor for Backpacker magazine. In addition to writing about her adventures in the deserts and mountains of the Southwest, she specializes in environmental topics and personality profiles. While on assignment for Backpacker, she has hiked with all types of offbeat wilderness enthusiasts—from survivalists to psychics to rattlesnake researchers. McGivney’s proximity to the Grand Canyon and other large Southwest wilderness areas puts her in the middle of the West’s most controversial public lands debates. She is the recipient of a 2008 Maggie Award in the Best News Story category from the Western Publications Association, recognized for a story titled “Free Fall” that ran in the May 2007 issue of Backpacker.

McGivney is also a part-time member of Northern Arizona University’s School of Communication, where she teaches journalism and outdoor writing courses. She has written and contributed to several books, including Leave No Trace: A Guide to the New Wilderness Etiquette.

Annette McGivney is the author of Resurrection (Braided River, 2009).

Bill McKibben

Bill McKibben is an American environmentalist and writer who frequently writes about global warming, alternative energy, and the risks associated with human genetic engineering. McKibben is active in the Methodist Church, and his writing sometimes has a spiritual bent. Formerly a New Yorker magazine staff writer, he is the author of numerous books, including The End of Nature, The Age of Missing Information, and Deep Economy: the Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. He is also a frequent contributor to various magazines including The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Orion Magazine, Mother Jones, The New York Review of Books, Granta, Rolling Stone, and Outside. He is a board member and contributor to Grist Magazine. McKibben has been awarded Guggenheim and Lyndhurst Fellowships, and won the Lannan Prize for nonfiction writing in 2000. He has honorary degrees from Green Mountain College, Unity College, Lebanon Valley College, and Sterling College. He is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College.

In January 2007, McKibben founded stepitup07.org to demand that Congress enact curbs on carbon emissions that would cut global warming pollution 80 percent by 2050. With six college students, he organized 1,400 global warming demonstrations across the country (in all fifty states) on April 14, 2007.

McKibben is the author of the foreword to Resurrection (Braided River, 2009). For more information, visit www.billmckibben.com.

William H. Meadows

William H. Meadows, president of The Wilderness Society since 1996, has been active in conservation for more than thirty years. He credits Earth Day, founded by his colleague at The Wilderness Society, former Senator Gaylord Nelson, as the catalyst for his involvement. He first became engaged in environmental issues as a volunteer leader in his home state of Tennessee. Meadows began his professional career at his alma mater, Vanderbilt University. Later he was vice president for college relations at Sweet Briar College in Virginia. His professional conservation career began in 1992, when he became director of the Sierra Club’s Centennial Campaign. He has worked on national efforts to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Rocky Mountain Front, the Northern Forest, and the Southern Appalachians, and provides leadership on wilderness campaigns in Utah, Alaska, California, and Washington State.

Besides serving on the Steering Committee of the White Cloud Council and on the Advisory Council for the Biodiversity Project, Meadows has also been an active leader in the Green Group. He is a member of the board of the National League of Conservation Voters, Campaign for America’s Wilderness, American Wilderness Coalition, The Murie Center, Island Press, and the National Wildlife Refuge Association.

William Meadows contributed "Arctic Refuge: Key to Saving Wild America" to Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land (Braided River, 2003) and the foreword to Living with Wolves (Braided River, 2005).

Debbie S. Miller

Debbie S. Miller grew up near the San Francisco Bay. In 1975, she and her husband, Dennis, moved to teach in Arctic Village, Alaska, a Gwich’in Athabascan Indian village located on the southern boundary of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Over the past twenty-eight years, Miller and her family have explored the refuge on many trips through all of its seasons.

Miller has authored two nature books for adults, many children’s books about Alaska’s environment, and a number of essays and magazine articles. In 1998, she received the International Reading Association Teacher’s Choice Award, and her book, Arctic Lights, Arctic Nights, received the 2003 John Burroughs Nature Book for Young Readers award. Her most recent book, Big Alaska: Journey Across America's Most Amazing State, won the 2007 Outstanding Science Trade Book for Children Award from the National Science Teachers Association. Her adult book Midnight Wilderness: Journeys in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge describes the natural and political history of the refuge through a series of wilderness adventure essays. She received the 1999 Refuge Hero Award from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for her writing, education, and conservation work. Miller lives near the wilderness in Fairbanks, Alaska, with Dennis and their two daughters, Robin and Casey.

Debbie Miller contributed "Clinging to an Arctic Homeland" to Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land (Braided River, 2003) and "Songs from Around the World" to Arctic Wings: Birds of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (Braided River, 2005). To learn more about her books and current work, click here.

Richard Nelson

Richard Nelson is a writer, activist, cultural anthropologist, and subsistence hunter who lives in Southeast Alaska. His books include Patriotism and the American Land, Make Prayers to the Raven (which became an award-winning PBS television series), Hunters of the Northern Forest, Shadow of the Hunter, and Hunters of the Northern Ice. Nelson's awards include the John Borroughs Medal for nature writing for The Island Within, the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award for Heart and Blood: Living with Deer in America, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Lannan Literary Award for nonfiction. He hosts his own radio show and speaks publicly on his work and on issues of conservation. In the words of author Jim Harrison, the magic of Nelson's writing is that it speaks to "hunters and anti-hunters, environmentalists and politicians, and anyone who cares about what's left of the natural world in America."

Richard Nelson contributed "Hunting Wisdom: The Iñupiat and the Polar Bear" to The Last Polar Bear: Facing the Truth of a Warming World (Braided River, 2008).

Wayne R. Petersen

Wayne R. Petersen is Massachusetts Audubon’s director of the Massachusetts Important Bird Areas (IBA) Program and has led international birding tours, lectured, and conducted birding workshops across North America for over thirty-five years. Petersen is a New England Regional Editor for North American Birds magazine and wrote the National Audubon Society Pocket Guide to Songbirds and Familiar Backyard Birds (East), coauthored Birds of Massachusetts and Birds of New England, and coedited the Massachusetts Breeding Bird Atlas.

Wayne Petersen contributed "Ocean Mariners" to Arctic Wings: Birds of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (Braided River, 2006).

Dave Porter

Dave Porter is a Kaska Dena leader who spent his early years on a trapline near Good Hope Lake in British Columbia. His accomplished career includes journalism, politics, communications, and public service on behalf of Canadian aboriginal organizations as well as governments in the Yukon, British Columbia, and the Northwest Territories. He was founding chairman of Northern Native Broadcasting, Yukon, and was a two-term vice-chair of the Council for Yukon Indians. He has served as deputy premier of the Yukon and as assistant deputy Minister of Aboriginal Affairs for British Columbia. As the first Oil and Gas Commissioner in British Columbia, he strove to build an open regulatory environment that would bring various interests in the province to a common table. In 2004 he was elected to the First Nations Summit, which works on behalf of First Nations involved in the treaty negotiation process in British Columbia. He is committed to preserving indigenous culture and creating greater opportunity for aboriginal youth.

Dave Porter contributed "Dechenla: Land at the End of the Trees" to Yellowstone to Yukon: Freedom to Roam (Braided River, 2005).

David Quammen

David Quammen travels on assignment for Harper’s, National Geographic, and other magazines, most often to jungles, deserts, and swamps. His accustomed beat is the world of field biology, ecology, evolutionary biology, and conservation, though he also occasionally writes about travel, history, and outdoor sports. For fifteen years, from the early 1980s to the mid-‘90s, he wrote a column called “Natural Acts” for Outside Magazine. He has received the National Magazine Award three times, and his work has appeared in anthologies such as The Best American Essays, The Best American Travel Writing, and American Short Story Masterpieces. His books include The Song of the Dodo, which won the John Burroughs Medal for nature writing and several other awards; Monster of God; and a spy novel, The Soul of Viktor Tronko. He lives in Montana with his wife (Betsy Gaines, a conservationist), their large furry dog, and a modest supply of cats.

David Quammen contributed the preface to Yellowstone to Yukon: Freedom to Roam (Braided River, 2005).

Craig Romano

Craig Romano was raised in New Hampshire, where he fell in love with the natural world. He has traveled extensively, from Alaska to Argentina, Bulgaria to South Korea, seeking wild places. An avid hiker, runner, kayaker, and cyclist, Craig has written about his passions for many publications, including Backpacker, Canoe and Kayak, Northwest Travel, Northwest Outdoors, AMC Outdoors, The North Columbia Monthly, and Northwest Runner. He also writes recreational content for Canada’s www.theweathernetwork.com and for www.Hikeoftheweek.com. He coauthored Best Hikes with Dogs: Inland Northwest with Alan Bauer and is author of Day Hiking: Olympic Peninsula. He also contributed to Best Wildflower Hikes: Washington. He holds an associate’s degree in forestry, a BA in history, and a graduate degree in education. He teaches part-time in the Edmonds and Shoreline (Washington) school districts and works part-time in Europe’s Pyrenees Mountains as a guide for Walking Softly Adventures. In August of 2006, Craig married his wife, Heather, at Curlew Lake State Park in the Columbia Highlands.

Craig Romano authored Columbia Highlands (Braided River, 2007). To check out his blog, click here.

Theodore Roosevelt IV

Dr. Carl Safina

Dr. Carl Safina is co-founder and president of Blue Ocean Institute, an international nonprofit conservation organization headquartered in East Norwich, New York. Safina is author of more than 100 articles and three books, including the award-winning Song for the Blue Ocean, Eye of the Albatross, and most recently, Voyage of the Turtle.

Safina grew up loving the ocean and its creatures. His childhood by the sea led him into scientific studies of seabirds and fish—and eventually to his doctorate in ecology from Rutgers University. During his research and while fishing recreationally and commercially, he noticed rapid declines in marlin, sharks, tuna, other fish, and sea turtles. This inspired him to push ocean conservation issues into the wildlife conservation mainstream and advocate for the restoration of abundant life in the oceans. He has helped lead campaigns to ban high-seas driftnets; rewrite and reform federal fisheries law in the United States; use international agreements toward the restoration of depleted populations of tuna, sharks, and other fish; and achieve passage of a United Nations global fisheries treaty. In 1990 he founded the Living Oceans Program at the National Audubon Society and served for the following decade as vice president for ocean conservation. In 2003, he and Mercédès Lee created Blue Ocean Institute.

Safina’s conservation work has been profiled in the New York Times, on Nightline, and in the Bill Moyers television special "Earth on Edge." Safina is a recipient of the Pew Scholars Award in Conservation and Environment, a World Wildlife Fund Senior Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award for nonfiction, the John Burroughs Medal for literature, and a MacArthur Prize, among others.

Dr. Safina is an essayist for Salmon in the Trees: Life in the Tongass Rainforest (Braided River, 2010). For more on his work, visit www.carlsafina.org. For more on the Blue Ocean Institute, visit www.blueocean.org.

George B. Schaller

George B. Schaller is a field biologist and vice president of science and exploration at the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York. He was born in 1933 and went to the University of Alaska and Wisconsin. He was a member of the 1956 Murie expedition to Alaska, which resulted in the establishment of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Schaller has spent most of his time during the past fifty years in the wilds of Asia, Africa, and South America, and has studied and helped protect species as diverse as the mountain gorilla, lion, jaguar, tiger, giant panda, and wild sheep and goats of the Himalaya. These studies have been the basis for his scientific and popular writings, including fifteen books, among them The Year of the Gorilla; The Last Panda; and The Serengeti Lion: A Study of Predator-Prey Relations, which won the National Book Award in 1972. For the past decade he has studied wildlife in Laos, Mongolia, and the Tibetan Plateau of China. His work helped persuade the Chinese government to set aside a portion of Tibet for nature preserves. His awards include the International Cosmos Prize (Japan) and the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement (USA).

George Schaller contributed "Arctic Legacy" to Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land (Braided River, 2003).

Stan Senner

Stan Senner is executive director and vice president of Audubon Alaska. He has more than thirty years of experience in ornithology and in the fields of natural resources and wildlife conservation policy. Senner served as the science coordinator for the Anchorage-based Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council.

Stan Senner contributed "Landscape of the Future?" to Arctic Wings: Birds of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (Braided River, 2006).

John Schoen

John Schoen grew up on an island off the Washington coast and received his Ph.D. in wildlife ecology from the University of Washington. John has been involved in wildlife conservation in Alaska since 1976 and currently serves as the senior scientist for Audubon Alaska in Anchorage. Prior to working for Audubon, he worked for the Alaska Department of Fish & Game for twenty years, including twelve years as a research biologist in Juneau, where he studied the ecology of brown bear, black-tailed deer, and mountain goats in the Tongass National Forest. Dr. Schoen also serves as an affiliate professor of wildlife biology at the University of Alaska–Fairbanks and has published more than fifty scientific and popular articles on wildlife conservation issues in Alaska. For the last three years he has collaborated with The Nature Conservancy, conducting a conservation assessment of southeastern Alaska and developing a conservation strategy for the Tongass National Forest.

John Schoen is an essayist for Salmon in the Trees: Life in the Tongass Rainforest (Braided River, coming Spring 2010).

Cynthia D. Shogan

Cynthia D. Shogan is the executive director of Alaska Wilderness League, which works to further the protection of Alaska’s incomparable natural endowment through legislative and administrative activities, public education, and grassroots activism. In 2002, Alaska Wilderness League was one of seven organizations to receive the inaugural Leadership Award from the Natural Resources Council of America for the environmental community’s campaign to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Shogan received the Wilburforce Foundation’s Conservation Leadership Award in 2003.

Cindy Shogan contributed "Birders in the Scope" to Arctic Wings: Birds of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (Braided River, 2006).

David Allen Sibley

David Allen Sibley, son of the well-known ornithologist Fred Sibley, began seriously watching and drawing birds in 1969, at age seven. He has written and illustrated articles on bird identification for many regional and national publications, as well as several books. Since 1980 Sibley has traveled throughout North America in search of birds, both on his own and as a leader of birdwatching tours, and has lived in California, Arizona, Texas, Florida, Georgia, New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey. This intensive travel and bird study culminated in the publication of his comprehensive guide to bird identification—National Audubon Society, The Sibley Guide to Birds—in the fall of 2000, and the companion volume—National Audubon Society, The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior—in the fall of 2001. Sibley now lives in Concord, Massachusetts, where he continues to study and draw birds.

David Sibley contributed "Visiting the Birds at their Summer Home" to Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land (Braided River, 2003) and the introduction to Arctic Wings: Birds of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (Braided River, 2006). To view his artwork, visit www.sibleyguides.com.

Martyn Stewart

Martyn Stewart is an audio-naturalist specializing in location and field recordings. Much of his work is used in natural history documentaries, many of which have been broadcast on BBC television and radio. He had also recorded several CDs, including one for Birdsongs of the Pacific Northwest (The Mountaineers Books, 2006). In 2006, he was a member of the Wild Sanctuary research team for the Arctic SoundScape Project in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and in 2007, he was a member of the Wild Sanctuary research team for the Katmai National Park Project, also in Alaska. He and his wife live in Redmond, Washington.

Martyn Stewart contributed a CD of birdsongs from the Arctic Refuge to Arctic Wings: Birds of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (Braided River, 2006). To listen to more of his work, click here.

Dr. Ian Stirling

Dr. Ian Stirling is a celebrated polar bear, seal, and marine ecosystem researcher with the Canadian Wildlife Service. He is adjunct professor of Zoology at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, and the author of Polar Bears, Bears: a Complete Guide to Every Species, and numerous academic papers.

Dr. Stirling is an essayist for Planet Ice (Braided River, 2009).

David Suzuki

David Suzuki, a highly acclaimed geneticist and environmental thinker, is the author of forty books, including The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature. He has won numerous academic awards and holds sixteen honorary degrees in Canada, the United States, and Australia. Since 1979, he has been host of the Canadian television series The Nature of Things with David Suzuki, for which he has won four Gemini Awards. Recognized as a world leader in sustainable ecology, he is the recipient of UNESCO’s Kalinga Prize for Science, the United Nations Environment Program Medal, and the Global 500, an is a member of the Royal Society of Canada and the Order of Canada. He is founder and chair of the David Suzuki Foundation and is professor emeritus of the University of British Columbia, Sustainable Development Research Institute. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Dr. Suzuki contributed the foreword to Yellowstone to Yukon: Freedom to Roam (Braided River, 2005). To learn more about him and the David Suzuki Foundation, visit www.davidsuzuki.org.

Gary Tabor

Gary Tabor is the head of Wilburforce Foundation's Bozeman, Montana, office and its Yellowstone to Yukon Program, which promotes science and conservation to maintain ecological connectivity between parks and protected areas in the U.S. and Canadian Rocky Mountains. He was trained as a wildlife veterinarian and ecologist. His career spans international and North American wildlife conservation domains, including seven years in East Africa and one year in South America. After helping to establish several protected areas abroad, Tabor was asked by his African colleagues to name any of his successes back home. This epiphany led to his catalytic involvement in helping to transform the Y2Y vision from theory to reality—first as associate director of the Henry P. Kendall Foundation in 1995 and now with Wilburforce.

Tabor contributed "Y2Y Today: Where We Are and Where We Go from Here"—with Harvey Locke—to Yellowstone to Yukon: Freedom to Roam (Braided River, 2005).

Robert Thompson

Robert Thompson is an Iñupiat Eskimo wildlife guide who lives on Barter Island, beyond the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In addition to guiding, he enjoys hunting, dog mushing, carving ivory, and woodcrafts. He is also an excellent camp cook and storyteller of local history. Thompson has been invited to speak across the nation about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Robert Thompson contributed "Cultural Reflections" to Arctic Wings: Birds of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (Braided River, 2006).

Ray Troll

From his tree-top studio, high above the Tongass Narrows in rainswept Ketchikan Alaska, Ray Troll draws and paints fishy images that migrate into museums, books, and magazines. Basing his quirky, aquatic images on the latest scientific discoveries, Troll brings a street-smart sensibility to the worlds of ichthyology and paleontology.

Born in Corning, New York, in 1954 and raised in an Air Force family, artistically driven Ray earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas, in 1977 and an MFA in studio arts from Washington State University in 1981. Troll moved to Alaska in 1983 to spend a summer helping his sister start a seafood retail store—and stayed. He is an honorary member of the Gilbert Ichthyological Society, the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators, and S.P.O.O.F. (the Society for the Protection of Old Fish).

Troll's unique blend of art and science has culminated in two traveling exhibits and several books, including three with author Brad Matsen—Shocking Fish Tales, Planet Ocean, and Raptors, Fossils, Fins, and Fangs—and Life's a Fish and then You Fry by Chef Randy Bayliss. Troll also wrote and illustrated a children’s book titled Sharkabet: A Sea of Sharks From A to Z.

He and his wife, Michelle, own and operate the SOHO COHO Contemporary Art and Craft Gallery, which is located on a spawning stream in the former red light district of Ketchikan. The gallery features Troll’s artwork, t-shirts, and fish juju, as well as original artwork by other local artists.

Over the years Ray has done artwork for various conservation organizations including the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council.

Ray Troll is a contributing illustrator to Salmon in the Trees: Life in the Tongass Rainforest (Braided River, 2010). To view his work, visit www.trollart.com.

Terry Tempest Williams

Terry Tempest Williams is the author of over a dozen books on our relationship to place. Her books include Refuge, An Unspoken Hunger, and Leap. In 2006, Williams received the Robert Marshall Award from The Wilderness Society, their highest honor given to an American citizen. She also received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Western American Literature Association and the Wallace Stegner Award given by The Center for the American West. She is the recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in creative nonfiction.

Terry Tempest Williams is currently the Annie Clark Tanner Scholar in Environmental Humanities at the University of Utah. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Orion Magazine, and numerous anthologies worldwide as a crucial voice for ecological consciousness and social change. She divides her time between Castle Valley, Utah, and Moose, Wyoming, where her husband Brooke Williams is the executive director of The Murie Center.

Williams contributed a poem, "Wild Mercy," to Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land (Braided River, 2003). For more on her work, click here.

Mark Wilson

Mark Wilson is wildlife photographer, photojournalist, writer, lecturer, and avid birder. His work has appeared in National Geographic, National Wildlife, and other publications, and he is a staff photographer at the Boston Globe and writes two columns for the paper: “The Backyard Birder” and “Camera.”

Wilson contributed photographs and an essay-"Where the Rivers Flow North"-to Arctic Wings: Birds of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (Braided River, 2006). For more on his work, visit www.eyesonowls.com.

Charles Wohlforth

Charles Wohlforth, a lifelong Alaska resident, is the author of several books and numerous magazine articles for publications such as The New Republic, Outside, and National Wildlife. He was the lead reporter on the Exxon Valdez oil spill for the Anchorage Daily News. He also served on the Anchorage Assembly from 1993 to 1999, representing the downtown area. Wohlforth's most recent book, The Whale and the Supercomputer: On the Northern Front of Climate Change, explores Arctic climate change from the perspective of Eskimo whalers and scientific researchers in Barrow, Alaska. It won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for the best science and technology book in 2005. Library Journal also listed it as among the best books of 2004.

Wohlforth contributed "On Thin Ice: Polar Bears in the Changing Arctic" to The Last Polar Bear: Facing the Truth of a Warming World (Braided River, 2008). For more on his work, visit www.wohlforth.net.

Rosita Worl

Rosita Worl is the president of the Sealaska Heritage Institute, a member of the Alaska Federation of Natives board, and a teacher at the University of Alaska–Southeast. She has served on the board of Sealaska—a Southeast Alaskan Native corporation—since 1987, and is the current vice chair of the board. Worl, whose Tlingít names are Yeidiklats'akw and Kaa haní, is an Eagle of the Shungukeidí (Thunderbird) Clan from the Kaawdliyaayi Hit (House Lowered from the Sun) of Klukwan and a Lukaax.ádi yadi (Child of the Sockeye Clan).

Dr. Worl is an essayist for Salmon in the Trees: Life in the Tongass Rainforest (Braided River, 2010).