“These peoples, these cultures, are not failed attempts at being us — they are unique answers to the fundamental question, ‘What does it mean to be human and alive?’”

 

An Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society, and named by the NGS as one of the Explorers for the Millenium,  Wade Davis has been described as “a rare combination of scientist, scholar, poet and passionate defender of all of life’s diversity.”

He holds degrees in anthropology and biology, and received his PhD in ethnobotany, all from Harvard University. He spent more than three years in the Amazon and Andes as a plant explorer, living among fifteen indigenous groups in eight Latin American nations while making some 6,000 botanical collections. Recently Davis’ work has taken him to Peru, Borneo, Tibet, the high Arctic, the Orinoco Delta of Venezuela and northern Kenya.

Author of The Wayfinders, One River, Light at the Edge of the World, The Serpent and the Rainbow, and Shadows in the Sun, Davis has published scientific and popular articles on subjects ranging from Haitian voodoo and Amazonian myth and religion to the global biodiversity crisis, the traditional use of psychotropic drugs, and the ethnobotany of South American Indians. He has written for National Geographic, Newsweek, Fortune, Conde Nast Traveler, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and other international publications. His photographs have been widely published, and his research has been the subject of more than 600 media reports and interviews in the United States and Canada and throughout Europe, Japan and South America.

Davis was the host and co-writer of Earthguide, a thirteen-part television series on the environment which aired on the Discovery Channel. Other television credits include the award-winning documentaries Spirit of the Mask, Cry of the Forgotten People, Forests Forever, Light at the Edge of the World, and the IMAX film,  Grand Canyon Adventure: River at Risk. He has twice given talks at the TED conference and recently delivered the prestigious 2009 CBC Massey  Lectures.

Click here to hear Wade’s TED conference talk on endangered cultures and the importance of the “ethnosphere.”

Click here for a link to Wade’s 2009 CBC Massey Lectures.

Click here to buy “The Wayfinders.”