WCS Conservationist Wins Biodiversity Leadership Award

WCS conservationist Graham (Guillermo) Harris has won the Biodiversity Leadership Award in recognition for his work in protecting wildlife in the southern cone of South America. The awards are presented by The Bay Foundation, and the Josephine Bay Paul and C. Michael Paul Foundation—both pioneers in promoting the conservation of biological diversity.

Well known for his work in helping protect South American wildlife such as the guanaco—a relative of the better known camel—and the ostrich-like rhea, Harris was one of eight new award winners, all of whom will share nearly a million dollars for their efforts.

Serving as WCS’s Southern Cone Regional Coordinator, Harris is also the co-founder and president of the Fundacion Patagonia Natural, the largest conservation NGO in southern Argentina. Besides terrestrial wildlife, Harris has also worked to protect coastal Patagonia’s ecological richness, including southern elephant seals, southern right whales, and Magellanic penguins. When ballast from oil tankers cruising off the Argentine coast posed a threat to the abundant penguin colonies there, Harris accumulated the needed scientific data to convince the governmental authorities to move shipping lanes farther out to sea. He has also served as administrator of the Patagonian Coastal Zone Management Plan, which has been praised by the United Nations Development Program.

Harris is currently helping to establish an advisory board that will manage more than 680,000 acres of Chilean wilderness on the island of Tierra del Fuego—wildlands that were presented to the Wildlife Conservation Society by Goldman Sachs in late 2004. The board will be made up of mostly Chilean members, and will oversee the unique forests, grasslands and rivers that comprise the landscape.

Harris is also a writer and an accomplished wildlife artist. His field guide, titled A Field Guide to the Birds and Mammals of Patagonia was published by Princeton University Press in 1998.

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