Mark Carwardine

Mark worked for several international conservation organisations (the World Wide Fund for Nature, in England; the United Nations Environment Programme, in Kenya; and the World Conservation Union, in Switzerland) before going freelance in 1986. Mark has written more than 40 books on a variety of travel, wildlife and conservation subjects - including the best-selling Last Chance to See with Douglas Adams and the most popular field guide to whales, dolphins and porpoises ever published. A selection of his books, which have been published in more than 20 languages and have sold millions of copies worldwide, can be seen here. His brand new, up-to-date field guide -- Whales and Dolphins, a Collins Wild Guide (HarperCollins) -- is available now. He also writes monthly columns in two magazines - BBC Wildlife and Wanderlust - and, until recently, wrote the back-page column in Diver magazine. He writes regular travel features for newspapers such as The Mail on Sunday and The Sunday Times and for 20 years was Advisory Editor of The Good Book Guide. With an extensive collection of photographs taken in more than 100 countries around the world, Mark is an accomplished and well-published photographer. He has been photographing wildlife and wild places for more than 20 years and, although he is best known for his whale and dolphin images, his work covers everything from great white sharks and gaboon vipers to magnificent frigatebirds and Komodo dragons. He spends more than half the year traveling the world in search of wildlife and exploring wild places and is continually adding to his image collection. Mark will be once again Chairman of the Judging Panel for the 2006 Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition - the world's biggest and most prestigious competition of its kind. He has recently been taking publicity pictures of David Attenborough for his recent BBC TV series, Life in the Undergrowth, and is about to embark on a world tour to photograph endangered mammal projects in no fewer than 13 different countries for the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation. Mark presented the weekly half-hour programme 'Nature' on BBC Radio 4 for six years and occasionally presents other mini-series for BBC Radio. He also provided the daily Environment News bulletin for 'Steve Wright in the Afternoon' on BBC Radio 1 and is a frequent contributor to many other radio and television programmes about wildlife and conservation. Mark lectures widely on his own travels and on a variety of wildlife and conservation subjects and runs one-day workshops and seminars on writing and photography (please see the events page for further information). Mark was a founding director of the wildlife travel companies Discover the World, WildOceans and Ocean Wanderers, and now runs occasional whale-watching, shark-diving and specialist wildlife photography tours on an ad hoc basis. Mark is a Senior Consultant to the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society and Conservation Adviser to the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation, and he advises other international conservation bodies on a variety of conservation and development issues. In a voluntary capacity, he actively supports a number of charities (see the links page) and spends a lot of time raising funds and awareness for wildlife conservation.