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Gary Paul Nabhan

"Gary Nabhan's interests and insights are as diverse as the wild seeds he gathers. Not only does he write beautifully about what he knows, he also goes out into the fields of native peoples collecting and conserving indigenous seeds, returning them to communities from which they have been lost. In words and actions, Nabhan aims to preserve no less than the 'remaining riches of the living world' and in so doing, is a candidate for sainthood." --Gretel Ehrlich.

Gary Paul Nabhan is an internationally-celebrated nature writer, seed saver, conservation biologist and sustainable agriculture activist who has been called “the father of the local food movement” by Utne Reader, Mother Earth News, Carleton College and Unity College. Gary is also an orchard-keeper, wild forager and Ecumenical Franciscan brother in his hometown of Patagonia, Arizona near the Mexican border.

He is author or editor of twenty-four books, some of which have been translated into Spanish, Italian, French, Croation, Korean, Chinese and Japanese. For his writing and collaborative conservation work, he has been honored with a MacArthur “genius” award, a Southwest Book Award, the John Burroughs Medal for nature writing, the Vavilov Medal, and lifetime achievement awards from the Quivira Coalition and Society for Ethnobiology.

He works as most of the year as a research scientist at the Southwest Center of the University of Arizona, and the rest as co-founder-facilitator of several food and farming alliances, including Renewing America’s Food Traditions and Flavors Without Borders.

Gary Paul Nabhan is a plant hunter, ethnobiologist, conservationist, and orchard-keeper. Winner of the John Burroughs Medal for nature writing for his first book, Gathering the Desert, he has been honored with the Vavilov Medal, a MacArthur Fellowship, and as a "pioneer of the local food movement" by Time magazine. A research scientist at the University of Arizona, he raises heritage fruit trees and heirloom chiles in Patagonia, Arizona. He is co-founder of Native Seeds/SEARCH, science advisor at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and board member of the Seed Savers Exchange. He was the first director of the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University, and initiated the Traditional Native American Farmers' Association. He has published a number of books and articles on ethnobotany, nutrition, and plant conservation. His books, which have been translated into six languages, include:

• Enduring Seeds: Native American Agriculture and Wild Plant Conservation 1989, reissued 2002
• The Desert Smells Like Rain: A Naturalist in Papago Indian Country 1982, reissued 2002
• The Forgotten Pollinators with Stephen L. Buchmann, 1996
• Why Some Like it Hot: Food, Genes, and Cultural Diversity, 2004
• Where Our Food Comes From: Retracing Nikolay Vavilov's Quest to End Famine, 2008
• Singing the Turtles to Sea: The Comcaac (Seri) Art and Science of Reptiles, 2003
• Coming Home to Eat: The Sensual Pleasures and Global Politics of Local Foods, 2001
• Cultures of Habitat: On Nature, Culture, and Story, 1997
• The Geography of Childhood with Stephen Trimble, 1994
• Gathering the Desert, 1987
• Songbirds, Truffles, and Wolves: An American Naturalist in Italy, 1993

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