My latest book is a biography of George Meléndez Wright
George Meléndez Wright's career has been described as brilliant; his ideas regarding wildlife, wilderness, ecosystem management, predator control, and conservation, as revolutionary. When he first arrived in Yosemite National Park in 1927 to work as a ranger naturalist—the first Hispanic to occupy a professional position in the National Park Service, at the young age of twenty-three—he had already visited every national park in the Western United States, including Alaska, and knew more about the parks than most employees of the relatively new agency.
He would soon go on to organize the first wildlife survey of western National Parks, forever changing how the Park Service would manage wildlife and natural resources for generations. Before his groundbreaking ideas began to influence Park Service policy, however, Wright faced persistent pushback by an entrenched Park Service culture that disregarded wildlife except for the role fauna played as spectacle for tourists. Nonetheless, his ideas prevailed.
This book is both a biography of Wright and a historical account of his time and his colleagues. It explores and celebrates what was so special about this young man, his unique upbringing and dynamic personality, his vision for science-based wildlife management in our parks, his place of honor in the pantheon of American conservationists, and how his life, though tragically short, left a lasting legacy which is relevant to this day.
