Canada's greatest explorers 2015

Wade Davis

Photo credit: Ryan Hill

Culture explorer

Expertise: Flora, fauna, Society, Photography, film, art

By Michela Rosano

David Suzuki calls him “a rare combination of scientist, scholar, poet and passionate defender of all of life’s diversity.” As an explorer-in-residence for the National Geographic Society, Wade Davis has focused his long career on studying indigenous cultures around the world, from Borneo to Haiti to the High Arctic. He started his career as a “plant explorer,” however, having earned degrees in biology and anthropology as well as a PhD in ethnobotany from Harvard, later living with aboriginal groups in the Amazon and Andes as he collected some 6,000 plant specimens. The Vancouver native has written 17 books and is a professional photographer, documenting and celebrating the places and people he visits.