| Gary Paul Nabhan | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 17, 1952 Gary, Indiana |
| Fields | Ecology, Ethnobotany |
| Institutions |
Native Seeds/SEARCH Northern Arizona University University of Arizona. |
| Alma mater | Prescott College, University of Arizona |
| Known for | Natural/Cultural History writings Cofounding "Native Seeds/SEARCH" Pollinator Decline Local foods Seed saving Collaborative conservation |
| Notable awards | John Burroughs Medal MacArthur Fellowship, Pew Conservation Scholar Southwest Book Award, Lannan Literary Award Kellogg Endowed Chair |
Gary Paul Nabhan (born 1952) is an agricultural ecologist, ethnobotanist, and writer whose work has focused primarily on the plants and cultures of the desert Southwest. He is considered a pioneer in the local food movement and the heirloom seed saving movement.
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 was the founding director of the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University. In 2008 he joined the University of Arizona faculty as a Research Social Scientist with the Southwest Center, where he now serves as the Kellogg Endowed Chair in Southwestern Borderlands Food and Water Security.
Nabhan won the John Burroughs Medal for distinguished natural history writing. He was also the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. He was named an Utne Reader visionary in 2011.[1] He has also been honored with two honorary PhD.s, and lifetime achievement awards from the Society for Conservation Biology, the Quivira Coalition, the Chefs Collaborative, Edible Communities and the Western Parks Association.
The unifying theme of Nabhan's work is how to avert the impoverishment and endangerment of ecological and cultural relationships,while celebrating the traditional ecological knowledge of the agrarian communities. He has played a catalytic role in the multicultural, collaborative conservation movement, being one of the co-authors of its populist manifesto, Finding the Radical Center. Nabhan was among the first creative non-fiction writers to link the loss of biodiversity to the loss of cultural diversity. In his book with Stephen Trimble, The Geography of Childhood, he was among the first popular writers to show concern with the loss of children's access to the natural world. He has been a significant contributor in calling attention to the environmental issue of pollinator decline. He founded the Forgotten Pollinators Campaign, the Migratory Pollinators Conservation Initiative, and now attempts to restore nectar corridors for pollinators in bi-national watersheds around his home in Patagonia, Arizona, which he calls the "pollinator diversity capitol of the United States." In addition to the articles and books on pollination ecology for which he has been sole author or editor, he co-authored with Stephen L. Buchmann one of the key works on the topic - The Forgotten Pollinators from Island Press (1996).
Nabhan farms a diverse set of heirloom fruit and nut varieties from the Spanish Mission era and from the Middle Eastern homelands of his ancestors, as well as heritage grains and beans adapted to arid climates. He is a champion of water harvesting, which he implements in his own orchard and gardens, and he has written introductions on this topic in permaculture books by Bill Mollison and Brad Lancaster.
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