Wade Davis
"Threads in the Fabric of the Ethnosphere"
Monday, March 01, 2004, 11:30 AM
Dr. Wade Davis, explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society, has worked as a guide, park ranger, forestry engineer, and conducted ethnographic fieldwork among indigenous societies of Northern Canada. A native of British Columbia, his recent work has taken him to East Africa, Peru, Borneo, Tibet, the high Arctic, the Orinoco deltas of Venezuela, and the deserts of Mali and Burkina Faso.
Davis is a cultural telepath. No matter where he is, he seems to win the trust and friendship of local people. David Suzuki calls him a combination of scientist, scholar, poet and passionate defender of all of life’s diversity. His writing is a joy to read, exhilarating in the scale of its vision and compelling in its urgent implications.
Davis holds degrees in Anthropology and Biology, and received his Ph.D. in Ethnobotany, all from Harvard. Mostly through the Harvard Botanical Museum, he spent over three years in the Amazon and Andes as a plant explorer, living among fifteen indigenous groups in eight Latin American nations while making some 6,000 botanical collections. He has published over a hundred scientific and popular articles on subjects ranging from Haitian vodoun and Amazonian myth and religion to the global biodiversity crisis, and ethnobotany of South American Indians.
Books by Wade Davis:
Light at the Edge of the World: A Journey Through the Realm of Vanishing Cultures (2001).
Shadows in the Sun: Travels to Landscapes of Spirit and Desire (1998)
Rainforest: Ancient Realm of the Pacific Northwest (1998)
One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rainforest (1996)
Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie (1988)
The Serpent and the Rainbow (1985)