DAN DAGGET

In Dan Dagget’s 32 years as an environmental activist he has worked with some of the most radical environmental groups and some of the most conservative. Dagget started out fighting coal strip mines in southeastern Ohio, then he moved to Arizona where he worked to designate wilderness, fought to increase protection for mountain lions and black bears, and helped initiate a campaign to ban uranium mining in the vicinity of the Grand Canyon. His involvement in that latter campaign included helping to organize some of the first direct actions of Earth First!. In 1992 he was designated one of the 100 top grass roots activists in the United States by the Sierra Club.

Since those early radical days, Dagget’s approach has changed. While he once worked to reduce the impact of humans on the land, he has come to realize that our species has played a vital role in sustaining many of the Earth’s ecosystems and that removing us from those ecosystems would damage them as much or even more than removing species we think of as “natural”—species such as wolves, beavers, or bison. His new book, Gardeners of Eden, Rediscovering Our Importance to Nature, has been called “the most important environmental manifesto since Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic.” It reveals the important roles humans have played and continue to play as keystones of ecosystems from the Amazon to the Great Plains of North America.

Dagget has also founded, and serves as president of EcoResults! a not-for-profit organization which offers consulting and helps find funding for land stewards seeking to manage the land in ways that create, restore, and sustain environmental health. His first book, Beyond the Rangeland Conflict, Toward a West That Works, has been recognized as one of the most important books recently written about rangeland issues.