List of conservationists

Updated on Oct 07, 2024

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This is a list of people who are, or have been, prominent conservationists. Environmentalists will also work on conservation issues.

List of conservationists

Edward Abbey – writer and wilderness activist

Ansel Adams – wilderness and landscape photographer

Roald Amundsen – Norwegian explorer of polar regions

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 10th Earl of Shaftesbury – former president of Sir David Attenborough's British Butterfly Conservation Society

David Attenborough – host of many BBC Natural History documentaries, naturalist, educator

Traven Apiki – wilderness enthusiast and conservationist. Kenai Peninsula, AK naturalist.

Jeannie Baker – artist/author of children's picture books and film maker

Nena Baltazar – President of Comunidad Inti Wara Yassi, a Bolivian nongovernmental organization working in conservation and wildlife care

S. Theodore Baskaran – wildlife conservationist

Tom Bell – founder of the Wyoming Outdoor Council and decorated World War II veteran

Frances Beinecke – President of the Natural Resources Defense Council

Daniel Boone – famous wilderness explorer

Harvey Broome – wilderness activist

David Brower – mid-20th century leader of the Sierra Club

Tom Brown – naturalist

David Bwakali – environmental writer, Journal editor, compassionate conservationist

Arthur Carhart – U.S. Forest Service official who inspired wilderness protection in the United States

Archie Carr – zoology professor and herpetologist, prominent sea turtle conservationist

Rachel Carson – scientist who advanced the global environmental movement

Jimmy Carter – signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in 1980, which protected more land than any single piece of legislation ever passed by Congress

Yvon Chouinard – environmentalist and outdoor industry businessman. Owner of the company Patagonia, known for its environmental focus.

Frederic Edwin Church – American landscape painter, famous for Twilight in the Wilderness

Eugenie Clark – conservationist of sharks

Clem Coetzee – (c. 1939–7 September 2006) was a Zimbabwean conservationist. He developed new methods of big game conservation.

Ernie Cooper – Canadian wildlife trade expert

Jeff Corwin – naturalist, Animal Planet host, herpetologist

Jacques Cousteau – oceanographer, marine biologist

William O. Douglas – U.S. Supreme Court Justice who was an ardent conservationist. William O. Douglas Wilderness is named after him

Iain Douglas-Hamilton – founder of Save the Elephants, zoologist

Gerald Durrell – naturalist, zookeeper, conservationist, writer, television presenter, founder of the Jersey Wildlife Conservation Trust (now Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust) and the Jersey Zoo (now renamed Durrell Wildlife Park)

Dwight D. Eisenhower – the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge became a federally protected wilderness area during his administration

Sammie Ellsworth – wilderness adventurer, enthusiast, and activist

Dian Fossey – primatologist known for studying gorillas, author, founder of the Digit Fund today known as the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International, was murdered presumably by poachers because of her cause

Bernard Frank – one of the founders of The Wilderness Society

Jane Goodall – primatologist known for studying chimpanzees, author, founder of the Jane Goodall Institute

George Bird Grinnell – prominent early American conservationist

Hubert Humphrey – U.S. Senator from Minnesota in 1956 who presented the first draft of the Federal Wilderness Preservation System Bill to Congress

Celia Hunter – former president of The Wilderness Society

Steve Irwin – Australian zookeeper, documentary film maker and activist

Lyndon Baines Johnson – signed the Wilderness Act on September 3, 1964, which permanently guaranteed millions of acres of wild land for future generations of Americans

Aldo Leopold – ecologist, forester and environmentalist; author of A Sand County Almanac

A. Starker Leopold – son of Aldo Leopold, zoologist and ecologist, writer of the Leopold Report

Wangari Maathai – Nobel Peace Prize recipient, founder of the Green Belt Movement, political activist

Benton MacKaye – wilderness activist, founder of the Appalachian Trail

Bob Marshall – principal founder of The Wilderness Society

Louis B. Marshall – constitutional lawyer who was instrumental in passing "forever wild" legislation of N.Y.S. Constitution, which permanently protected wilderness in Adirondack and Catskill Forest Preserves

Nigel Marven – wildlife presenter and producer

Bill Mason – wilderness author and canoeist

Stephen Mather – conservationist who was the first director of National Park Service, as a unified federal agency to oversee National Parks administration which he ran publicity campaign to established

Malcolm McCallum – conservation biologist who publishes on biodiversity and extinction, and established the scholarly journal Herpetological Conservation and Biology.

Chico Mendes – Brazilian environmentalist

Cynthia Moss – elephant behavioural specialist, ethologist, author

John Muir – author and preservationist, founder of the Sierra Club

Margaret Murie – "Grandmother of the conservation movement"

Olaus Murie – wilderness activist

Abi Kusno Nachran – Indonesian rain forest preservation activist

Roderick Nash – author of "Wilderness and the American Mind"

Lone Drøscher Nielsen – working, with Borneo Orangutan Survival for conservation of Bornean orangutans and orangutan habitat

Aletris Neils – Director Conservation CATalyst, conservationist, mitigating human-wildlife conflict, mammalogist

Ric O'Barry – former dolphin trainer for the TV show Flipper turned dolphin activist and conservationist, featured in the documentary The Cove

Ernest Oberholtzer – one of the eight founders of The Wilderness Society

Sigurd F. Olson – author, environmentalist, teacher, canoeist and advocate in the northern Midwest. Worked to establish Pt. Reyes, Arctic NWR, Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness

Gifford Pinchot – conservationist, first Chief of the United States Forest Service

Sharon Pincott – naturalist, wildlife conservationist, elephant behavioural specialist, author

Ian Player – international conservationist

Carl Pope – executive director of the Sierra Club

Alan Rabinowitz – President and CEO of Panthera Corporation, a conservation organization devoted to protecting the world's 36 cat species

Phil Radford – environmental, clean energy, and democracy leader, director of Greenpeace

Matthew Richardson – author of 13-volume series Threatened and Recently-Extinct Vertebrates (Springer)

Theodore Roosevelt – set aside 194,000,000 acres (790,000 km²) of federal land for national parks and nature preserves. He was also instrumental in establishing the United States Forest Service

Subhransu Satpathy – Indian conservationist and environmental film maker

Peter Scott – (1909–1989) founder of the World Wildlife Fund and Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust and the first conservationist to be knighted (in 1973)

William H. Seward – United States Secretary of State who acquired Alaska from Russia for two cents per acre. Seward's Folly is the largest remaining wilderness in North America

Charles Alexander Sheldon – the "Father of Denali National Park"

Willie Smits – working, with Borneo Orangutan Survival for conservation of Bornean orangutans and orangutan habitat

Gary Tabor – conservation catalyst, founder and director of Center for Large Landscape Conservation

Doug Tompkins and Kristine Tompkins – entrepreneurs turned conservationists; together have protected 2,200,000 acres (8,900 km²) in Chile and Argentina

Henry David Thoreau – author, naturalist and development critic

Stewart Udall – United States Secretary of the Interior when the Wilderness Act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964

Marlice van Vuuren – conservationist and broadcaster

Paul Watson – founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a co-founder of Greenpeace, and the star of the television show Whale Wars on Animal Planet that documents his organization's yearly trip to the southern ocean to disrupt the illegal activities of Japanese Whalers/ ICR.

Robert K. Watson – founder and father of LEED Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design

David B. Wingate – saved the Bermuda petrel, or cahow, from extinction and almost single-handedly returned 15-acre Nonsuch Island, in Bermuda, to its precolonial state

E.O. Wilson – Pelligrino University Professor at Harvard University, for introducing the concept of Biophilia and making many other contributions to environmental science

Robert Sterling Yard – founding member of The Wilderness Society

Howard Zahniser – leader of The Wilderness Society, drafted the Wilderness Act

References

List of conservationists Wikipedia

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