David Western

Adjunct Professor
Section of Ecology Behavior and Evoution, UCSD
Kenya Wildlife Services

e-mail: dwestern@africaonline.co.ke or dwes107394@aol.com
Kenya Wildlife Services Web Page

David Western is chairman of the African Conservation Centre, Nairobi. He began research into savannas ecosystems at Amboseli in 1967, looking at the interactions of humans and wildlife. His work, unbroken since then, has served as a barometer of changes in the savannas and test of conservation solutions based on the continued coexistence of people and wildlife.

Western directed Wildlife Conservation Society programs internationally, established Kenya’s Wildlife Planning Unit, chaired the African Elephant and Rhino Specialist Group, and was founding president of The International Ecotourism Society, chairman of the Wildlife Clubs of Kenya, director of Kenya Wildlife Service and founder of the African Conservation Centre in Nairobi. He is an adjunct professor in Biology at the University of California, San Diego and the University of Minnesota.

Western’s publications include Conservation for the Twenty-first Century (OUP, 1989), Natural Connections: Perspectives in Community-based Conservation (Island Press, 1994) and In the Dust of Kilimanjaro (Shearwater, 2001). He is presently conducting a study on climate change in the Kenya-Tanzania borderlands in collaboration with University of California San Diego, University of York, Missouri Botanical Gardens and African Conservation Centre.