Anthropologist, Botanical Explorer, and Best-Selling Author and Explorer in Residence, National Geographic Society A native of British Columbia, Wade Davis has worked as a guide, park ranger, forestry engineer, and conducted ethnographic fieldwork among several indigenous societies of northern Canada. He has published one hundred scientific and popular articles on subjects ranging from Haitian vodoun 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 numerous publications, including the Globe and Mail, Newsweek, Harpers, National Geographic, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and several other international publications. His photographs have been widely published. Wade Davis holds degrees in anthropology and biology and received his Ph.D. in ethnobotany from Harvard University. He is currently an Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society. Mostly through the Harvard Botanical Museum, he spent over three years in the Amazon and Andes as a plant explorer, living among 15 indigenous groups in eight Latin American nations while making some 6,000 botanical collections. His work later took him to Haiti to investigate folk preparations implicated in the creation of zombies, an assignment that led to his writing "Passage of Darkness" (1988) and "The Serpent and the Rainbow" (1986), an international best seller which appeared in ten languages and was later released by Universal as a motion picture. His other books include Penan: Voice for the Borneo Rain Forest (1990), Nomads of the Dawn (1995), The Clouded Leopard (1998), "Shadows in the Sun" (1998), "Rainforest" (1998) and "One River" (1996), which was nominated for the 1997 Governor General's Literary Award for Nonfiction, Canada's most prestigious literary prize, and most recently, a book of photographs entitled "Light at the Edge of the World" (2002). Davis has lectured at the American Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, California Academy of Sciences, Missouri Botanical Garden, Field Museum of Natural History, New York Botanical Garden, National Geographic Society, Royal Ontario Museum, the Explorer's Club, the Royal Geographical Society as well as more than 60 major universities. A Research Associate of the Institute of Economic Botany of the New York Botanical Garden, he is a Fellow of the Linnean Society, Fellow of the Explorer's Club, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and Executive Director of the Endangered People's Project. Since 1994 Davis has served as Vice President for Ethnobotany and Conservation at Andes Pharmaceuticals. Davis is a board member of the David Suzuki Foundation, Ecotrust, Future Generations, Cultural Survival and Rivers Canada, all NGOs dedicated to conservation-based development and the protection of cultural and biological diversity. Davis was the host and co-writer of "Earthguide," a 13-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," and "Forests Forever." Davis's research projects have been the subject of some 500 print, radio and television interviews and reports in Canada, the USA, Japan, Argentina, Great Britain, Italy, France, and Germany.
> Books by Wade Davis
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see the television series:
episode 4 - time 50.00
related pages:
article The biosphere and the "ethnosphere"
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