Gary Nabhan papers

Gary Paul Nabhan was born 17 March 1952 in Gary, Indiana, a son of Theodore B. and Wanda Mary (Goodwin) Nabhan. He attended Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa; Prescott College in Prescott, Arizona, and received a PhD in Arid Lands Resources from the University of Arizona in 1983.

Nabhan advocates for the preservation of desert plants, native seeds, and the cultural traditions of Native Americans of the southwestern United States. The fieldwork for his dissertation, "Papago Fields: Arid lands ethnobotany and agricultural ecology" (University of Arizona 1983), was conducted in the Tohono O'odham nation.

Nabhan began his professional career as a research associate with the Office of Arid Land Studies at the University of Arizona. In 1983, he co-founded Native Seeds/SEARCH, a grassroots conservation organization dedicated to collecting and preserving the native seeds of the desert Southwest. He was assistant director of the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, Arizona, and later writer-in-residence and director of science at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.

He is widely published in both scientific juornals and the American trade press. Awards include a McArthur Fellowship, a Pew Scholarship for conservation research, and a John Burroughs Medal in 1987 for outstanding nature writing in "Gathering the Desert."