This is a list of people who were, are, or have been prominentconservationists.Environmentalists would also work on conservation issues.

• Edward Abbey – writer and wilderness activist
• Ansel Adams – wilderness and landscape photographer
• Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 10th Earl of Shaftesbury – former president of SirDavid Attenborough'sBritish Butterfly Conservation Society
• Damian Aspinall – chairman ofThe Aspinall Foundation
• David Attenborough – host of many BBC Natural History documentaries, naturalist, educator

• Jeannie Baker – artist/author of children's picture books and film maker
• Nena Baltazar – President ofComunidad Inti Wara Yassi, a Bolivian nongovernmental organization working in conservation and wildlife care
• S. Theodore Baskaran – wildlife conservationist
• Tom Bell – founder of theWyoming Outdoor Council and decorated World War II veteran
• Frances Beinecke – President of theNatural Resources Defense Council
• Harvey Broome – wilderness activist
• David Brower – mid-20th century leader of theSierra Club
• Tom Brown – naturalist
• David Bellamy – botanist and environmental campaigner

• Arthur Carhart – U.S. Forest Service official who inspired wilderness protection in the United States
• Archie Carr – zoology professor and herpetologist, prominent sea turtle conservationist
• Rachel Carson – scientist who advanced the global environmental movement
• Jimmy Carter – signed theAlaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in 1980, which protected more land than any single piece of legislation ever passed by Congress
• Yvon Chouinard – environmentalist and outdoor industry businessman. Owner of the company Patagonia, known for its environmental focus.
• Frederic Edwin Church – American landscape painter, famous forTwilight in the Wilderness
• Eugenie Clark – conservationist of sharks
• Clem Coetzee – (c. 1939–7 September 2006) Zimbabwean conservationist. He developed new methods of big game conservation.
• Ernie Cooper – Canadian wildlife trade expert
• Jeff Corwin –Animal Planet host, herpetologist
• Adjany Costa – Angolan marine biologist
• Jacques Cousteau – oceanographer, marine biologist
• Cynthia Mbabazi – advocate, researcher

• Marjory Stoneman Douglas – writer/conservationist who founded Friends of the Everglades

• William O. Douglas –U.S. Supreme Court Justice who was an ardent conservationist.William O. Douglas Wilderness is named after him
• Iain Douglas-Hamilton – founder ofSave the Elephants, zoologist
• Gerald Durrell – naturalist, zookeeper,conservationist, writer, television presenter, founder of the Jersey Wildlife Conservation Trust (nowDurrell Wildlife Conservation Trust) and the Jersey Zoo (now renamedDurrell Wildlife Park)

• Dwight D. Eisenhower – theArctic National Wildlife Refuge became a federally protected wilderness area during his administration
• Ralph Waldo Emerson – author, naturalist, wilderness adventurer, activist and development critic

• Dian Fossey – primatologist known for studyinggorillas, author, founder of theDigit Fund today known as the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International, was murdered presumably by poachers because of her cause
• Bernard Frank – one of the founders ofThe Wilderness Society

• Jane Goodall – primatologist known for studyingchimpanzees, author, founder of theJane Goodall Institute
• George Bird Grinnell – prominent early American conservationist
• Bernhard Grzimek – renowned German zoo director and animal conservationist in postwar West Germany.
• Madison Grant – American creator ofwildlife management and co-founder ofSave the Redwoods League

• Hubert Humphrey – U.S. Senator from Minnesota in 1956 who presented the first draft of the Federal Wilderness Preservation System Bill to Congress
• Celia Hunter – former president of The Wilderness Society

• Steve Irwin – Australian zookeeper, documentary film maker and activist

• Lyndon Baines Johnson – signed theWilderness Act on September 3, 1964, which permanently guaranteed millions of acres of wild land for future generations of Americans
• Aldo Leopold – ecologist, forester and environmentalist; author ofA Sand County Almanac
• A. Starker Leopold – son ofAldo Leopold, zoologist and ecologist, writer of theLeopold Report

• Wangari Muta Maathai – Nobel Peace Prize recipient, founder of the Green Belt Movement, political activist
• Benton MacKaye – wilderness activist, founder of theAppalachian Trail
• Bob Marshall – principal founder ofThe Wilderness Society
• Louis B. Marshall – constitutional lawyer who was instrumental in passing "forever wild" legislation of N.Y.S. Constitution, which permanently protected wilderness inAdirondack andCatskill Forest Preserves
• Nigel Marven – wildlife presenter and producer
• Bill Mason – wilderness author and canoeist
• Stephen Mather – conservationist who was the first director ofNational Park Service, as a unified federal agency to overseeNational Parks administration which he ran publicity campaign to established
• Malcolm McCallum – conservation biologist who publishes on biodiversity and extinction, and established the scholarly journalHerpetological Conservation and Biology.
• Ian McTaggart-Cowan – Canadian zoologist, conservationist and television presenter
• Rodrigo Medellín – Mexican ecologist and academic
• Betty Leslie-Melville – American born writer, who along with her husband Jock Leslie-Melvile, is known for authoring ten books on conservation topics, protecting theRothschild's giraffe in Kenya, and founding theGiraffe Centre inLang'ata,Kenya.
• Chico Mendes – Brazilian environmentalist
• Sergio Rossetti Morosini – Brazilian-American environmentalist
• Cynthia Moss – elephant behavioural specialist, ethologist, author
• John Muir – author and preservationist, founder of theSierra Club
• Margaret Murie – "Grandmother of the conservation movement"
• Olaus Murie – wilderness activist
• Erni Suyanti Musabine, veterinarian involved in the conservation ofSumatran tigers^[1]
• Mike Pandey

• Abi Kusno Nachran – Indonesian rain forest preservation activist
• Roderick Nash – author of "Wilderness and the American Mind"
• Lone Drøscher Nielsen – working withBorneo Orangutan Survival for conservation ofBornean orangutans andorangutan habitat
• Henri Nsanjama – Malawian conservationist
• Aletris Neils – carnivore conservationist and executive director of Conservation CATalyst

• Ric O'Barry – former dolphin trainer for the TV show Flipper turned dolphin activist and conservationist, featured in the documentaryThe Cove
• Ernest Oberholtzer – one of the eight founders of The Wilderness Society
• Sigurd F. Olson – author, environmentalist, teacher, canoeist and advocate in the northern Midwest. Worked to establish Pt. Reyes, Arctic NWR, Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness

• Deborah Parker –indigenous rights activist, conservationist, and environmentalist who has opposed various pipeline projects^[2][3] and who advocates for protecting coastal waters and salmon among theNorthwest Natives
• Gifford Pinchot – conservationist, first Chief of theUnited States Forest Service
• Sharon Pincott – naturalist, wildlife conservationist, elephant behavioural specialist, author
• Ian Player – international conservationist
• Carl Pope – executive director of the Sierra Club

• Alan Rabinowitz – President and CEO ofPanthera Corporation, a conservation organization devoted to protecting the world's 36 cat species
• Phil Radford – environmental, clean energy, and democracy leader, director ofGreenpeace
• Bradbury Robinson – medical doctor and conservationist who published warnings in the 1940s against the use of DDT in agricultural
• Theodore Roosevelt – set aside 194,000,000 acres (790,000 km²) of federal land for national parks and nature preserves. He was also instrumental in establishing theUnited States Forest Service

• Peter Scott – (1909–1989) founder of theWorld Wildlife Fund andWildfowl & Wetlands Trust and the first conservationist to be knighted (in 1973)
• Charles Alexander Sheldon – the "Father ofDenali National Park"
• Willie Smits – working, withBorneo Orangutan Survival for conservation of Bornean orangutans and orangutan habitat
• Michael Soulé – (1936–2020) father of conservation biology; cofounder and first president of theSociety for Conservation Biology
• Austin Stevens – naturalist, herpetologist, wildlife photographer, documentarian, television personality, and author

• Gary Tabor – founder and director ofCenter for Large Landscape Conservation
• Doug Tompkins andKristine Tompkins – entrepreneurs turned conservationists; together have protected 2,200,000 acres (8,900 km²) in Chile and Argentina
• Henry David Thoreau – author, naturalist and development critic
• Timothy Treadwell – documentary filmmaker, naturalist and founder of the bear-protection organization "Grizzly People"

• Stewart Udall – United States Secretary of the Interior when theWilderness Act was signed into law by PresidentLyndon B. Johnson in 1964

• Lily Venizelos – Greek conservationist
• Marlice van Vuuren – conservationist and broadcaster

• Eric Wikramanayake
• Paul Watson – founder of theSea Shepherd Conservation Society, a co-founder ofGreenpeace, and the star of the television showWhale Wars onAnimal Planet that documents his organization's yearly trip to the southern ocean to disrupt the illegal activities of Japanese Whalers/ICR.
• Robert K. Watson – founder and father of LEEDLeadership in Energy and Environmental Design
• David B. Wingate – saved the Bermuda petrel, or cahow, from extinction and almost single-handedly returned 15-acre Nonsuch Island, in Bermuda, to its precolonial state
• E.O. Wilson – Pelligrino University Professor at Harvard University, for introducing the concept of Biophilia and making many other contributions to environmental science^[4]

• Robert Sterling Yard – founding member of The Wilderness Society

• Howard Zahniser – leader ofThe Wilderness Society, drafted theWilderness Act

• List of conservation issues
• Environmentalism

• Conservationists
• Lists of people by ideology

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata