Natalie Dawson is a biologist, writer, advocate and teacher with a passion for community-led efforts to advocate for civil discourse, civic engagement, public education and conservation. Aside from research publications, she has written for Backcountry Magazine, Mountain Bike Magazine, High Country News, and Readers Digest and numerous professional outlets in her leadership roles with Alaska Venture Fund and National Audubon Society.

A former professor of wilderness studies and former director of the Wilderness and Civilization program, Natalie continues to teach field education classes across the western U.S. that illuminate the many ways in which humans live in, with, and at times without, lands and waters at the heart of global debates of the health and well-being of our collective future.

Natalie writes and works from her home in Haines, Alaska, on the banks of the Chilkat River, one of the world’s last free-flowing rivers sustaining all five species of wild Pacific salmon.