Gary Paul Nabhan

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Gary Paul Nabhan (1952- ) is an ecologist, ethnobotanist, and writer whose work has focused primarily on the plants and cultures of the desert Southwest.

A first generation Lebanese-American, Nabhan was raised in Gary, Indiana. He served as Director of Science at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and co-founded Native Seeds/SEARCH, a nonprofit conservation organization that works to preserve indigenous southwestern agricultural plants as well as knowledge of their uses. Nabhan is currently director of the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University.

Among his books are The Desert Smells Like Rain, Cultures of Habitat, Why Some Like It Hot: Food, Genes, and Cultural Diversity, Enduring Seeds: Native American Agriculture and Wild Plant Conservation, Cross-pollinations: The Marriage of Science and Poetry, Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods, and Gathering the Desert, which won the John Burroughs Medal for distinguished natural history writing. He was also the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.

Nabhan has been a significant contributor in calling attention to the environmental issue of pollinator decline. He co-authored with Stephen L. Buchmann one of the key works on the topic - The Forgotten Pollinators from Island Press (1996).