Eric W. Sanderson

Mr. Sanderson is a Senior Conservation Ecologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), and the author of Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City (Abrams, 2009). He is fascinated about how people make decisions, particularly decisions about our relationships with the rest of nature. He is particularly interested in the geographic, historic, and aspirational contexts for restoration, conservation and sustainability, which has led him into studies of species and landscape conservation, historical ecology, and urban design. His interests stretch from wild places to cities. Currently Mr. Sanderson is working on a book about the promise of an American landscape beyond oil, cars and suburbs, while pursuing the Welikia Project, on the historical ecology of the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and the waters in-between, and Mannahatta 2409, an on-line forum to help the public envision climate-resilient designs for Manhattan over the next four hundred years. Mr. Sanderson holds a Ph.D. in ecology, with emphasis in ecosystem and landscape ecology, from the University of California, Davis.  He is based at WCS headquarters at the Bronx Zoo, in New York City.

Image from Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City