Conservation Biologist Dr. Guy McPherson is the world’s leading expert on the existential risks of abrupt, irreversible climate change. He has been featured in several documentary films, as well as an episode of National Geographic with Bill Nye (“Bill Nye’s Global Meltdown”) and has appeared on numerous newscasts and media outlets, including National Geographic Explorer with Bill Nye and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

McPherson is professor emeritus of conservation biology at the University of Arizona, where he taught and conducted research for twenty award-winning years. His scholarly work has produced more than a dozen books and hundreds of articles.

Born in 1960, McPherson grew up in a small logging town in northern Idaho. Surrounded by the bounty and beauty of the natural world, he spent his childhood hunting and fishing, and witnessed the final years of the age of economic expansion, along with the final log drive down the Clearwater River.

McPherson received a forestry degree at the University of Idaho, and paid his way through college as a wildland firefighter. He completed his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees at Texas Tech University and, following a brief postdoctoral experience at the University of Georgia and a visiting assistant professor position at Texas A&M University, he began his tenure-track experience in Tucson. McPherson was promoted to full professor before he turned 40 years of age.

During his tenure in Tucson, McPherson also taught at the University of California in Berkeley, Grinnell College in Iowa, and Southern Utah University. He was the inaugural director of the David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellowship Program, which is now administered by the Society for Conservation Biology. His pioneering activities in the classroom and in the field led to opportunities to speak at many colleges and universities, and garnered numerous accolades