Proposed by: The Garden Workers, Zone V

Bob is Senior Fellow at The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University in Philadelphia. His books, lectures, and scholarly work have encouraged preservation of the natural and human treasures about which he writes so passionately. Bob’s explorations have retraced the travel routes of several 18th and 19th century naturalists, including William Bartram, John James Audubon, Henry David Thoreau and John Muir. His natural history research has taken him to: Nepal, Ecuador, Venezuela, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Siberia, Guyana and Mongolia. As recounted in Headhunters and Hummingbirds, an Expedition into Ecuador, Bob was part of a grueling scientific expedition to the previously unexplored Ecuadorian Cordillera de Cutucu, home of the head-shrinking Jivaro or Shuar tribe. His seven trips to Mongolia between 1994 and 2011 were to study the wildlife and document the effects of climate change on native habitats and on the nomadic herdsmen who live on the harsh but fragile steppe. Bob was part of the first party from the US invited to study Lake Hovsgol, a fresh water lake associated with Siberia’s legendary Lake Baikal, the largest (by volume) and oldest (at 25 million years) freshwater lake in the world. This was a rare opportunity to study evolution of organisms and ecosystems that had not felt the direct effects of human activity. In 2006 he was sent by the White House to represent the US at Mongolia’s 800th birthday. Bob has a special interest in the overlap of science, art, and the humanities, and the gift of understanding how delicate political, social and environmental elements unite to affect civilizations in fragile habitats. He is a keen observer, a non-judgmental scientist, and a gentle man.