Video

Susan Anderson & Laura Paulson

Dr. Anderson (retired) served in the Nature Conservancy’s Mexico, Africa and Latin America divisions.
Paulson is the Southwest borderlands program lead for the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Lee Baiza

Superintendent (retired), Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, U.S. National Park Service.

Lorraine Eiler

Tribal elder and leader. Hia-Ced O'odham member and San Lucy District Alternate of the Tohono O'odham Legislative Council. Founding board member of the International Sonoran Desert Alliance.

Exequiel Ezcurra


Plant ecologist and conservationist. studying the ecosystems of northwestern Mexico. A Fellow of the Ecological Society of America and Corresponding Fellow of the Mexican Academy of Sciences, Ezcurra has published more than 300 papers and books, has developed two Museum exhibits and an award-winning film on the Sea of Cortés. He was honored with a Conservation Biology Award and a Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation; he was Scientific Chair of the CITES Convention, President of Mexico’s National Institute of Ecology, and 11-year Director of the University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States (UC MEXUS). Currently, he is Professor of Ecology at the University of California, Riverside.


Richard Felger

Richard Stephen Felger (1934-2020) was a researcher with the Herbarium, School of Plant Sciences, University of Arizona. He published widely on arid-land botany, ethnobotany, and conservation, and he was a coauthor of Plant Life of a Desert Archipelago: Flora of the Sonoran Islands in the Gulf of California.

Karl Flessa

Professor of Geosciences, University of Arizona and Chief Scientist for the Minute 323 Monitoring and Science Team for the Colorado River Delta.

Diana Hadley and Peter Warshall

Hadley is founding board member of the Northern Jaguar Project and retired Associate Curator of Ethnohistory and Director of the Arizona State Museum’s Office of Ethnohistorica Research.
Warshall (1940–2013) was an ecologist, activist and essayist whose work centered on conservation and conservation-based development. Warshall was the Sustainability and Anthropology Editor of one of the later editions of the Whole Earth Catalog series, and served as an editor of its spin-off magazine, Whole Earth Review.

Gayle & William (Bill) Hartmann

Gayle has spent the last 35 years working in a variety of archaeological capacities throughout southern Arizona, including serving as editor of Kiva: The Journal of Southwestern Anthropology and History. She is currently a research associate at the University of Arizona’s Arizona State Museum.
Bill is a noted planetary scientist, painter, and author. He and Gayle co-wrote the beautifully illustrated book, "Desert Heart: Chronicles of the Sonoran Desert".

Joseph Joaquin

(December 1, 1936-September 18, 2019) Elder and tribal leader. Joaquin was Cultural Resource Affairs Specialist for the Tohono O'odham Nation.

Beaumont (Beau) McClure

Department of the Interior’s Special Assistant for International Programs (retired).

Adrianne Rankin

Archaeologist, Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range.

William (Bill) Shaw

Professor Emeritus of Wildlife and Fisheries Science at The University of Arizona School of Natural Resources and the Environment.

Thomas Sheridan

Research Anthropologist at the Southwest Center and Professor of Anthropology in the University of Arizona School of Anthropology.

Harold Smith

Superintendent (retired), Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.

Tracy Taft

Executive Director (retired) of the International Sonoran Desert Alliance (ISDA).

Robert Varady

Research professor of environmental policy and immediate past director of the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, University of Arizona.

Joseph Wilder

Director, Southwest Center and editor, Journal of the Southwest, University of Arizona.

David Yetman

Author and research social scientist at the Southwest Center, University of Arizona.

Francisco Zamora

Senior Director of Programs, Sonoran Institute.