Chris was born and raised in Yorkshire, England and his interest in birds and conservation began at an early age. While at high school he worked as a voluntary warden for the RSPB and park warden at his local Adel Dam Nature Reserve where he carried out annual censuses of the reserve’s breeding birds over a number of years. He also made daily counts of the 80,000+ strong winter gull roost at Eccup Reservoir, Leeds.

Chris studied Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge where he acted as Undergraduate Secretary of the Cambridge Bird Club. He specialised in ecology and took part in ornithological expeditions to Cameroon and Venezuela, the latter winning the ICBP-BP Conservation Expedition Competition Award. With the resulting masters degree he moved to South America where he has worked as a conservation biologist and bird tour leader since 1988, thoroughly enjoying both careers.

His work has taken him throughout Latin America and he has lived in Peru and Nicaragua, in addition to his home base of Venezuela. Over the last five years he has worked as consultant biodiversity specialist for the World Conservation Monitoring Centre, United Nations Development Programme, Fauna and Flora International, the Venezuelan Ministry of the Environment and several national organisations. He has researched the affects of macroeconomic policy on the Venezuelan environment; carried out rapid biodiversity assessments in Belize, Ecuador and Venezuela; facilitated biodiversity workshops for the UNEP Convention on Biological Diversity in Belize, Chile, Cuba, Tanzania and Venezuela; worked on a conflict resolution project in Canaima National Park, Venezuela; and taught an ornithology course for the University of Maine.

Borderland Tours, Kind Vulture Falls, Belize (Photo: Peter López)

In 1993 Chris helped launch the Neotropical Bird Club which publishes the magazine Cotinga and he is the Club's Venezuelan Representative. He forms part of the Venezuelan Rarities Committee, is a member of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas and sits on the Board of Directors of the Venezuelan conservation organisation PROVITA.

Chris has authored several books on conservation in Latin America including a manual for training park guards and a directory of Latin American national parks as well as a number of articles on birds and conservation. Together with several colleagues, he has just finished The Ecological Guide to the Gran Sabana, a popular guide to the tepui (table mountain) region of south-east Venezuela, an area in which he has had the pleasure to work frequently over the last ten years (see http://www.thelostworld.org for more).

Nowadays he carries out bird research and census work and leads bird tours. His current bird research includes a study of the avifauna of Guaiquinima, a remote tepui in southern Venezuela, an analysis of threatened birds in Venezuela, a study of migration at Lake Mucubají in the Venezuelan Andes and the bird census and mapping project NeoMaps. He is beginning work on a guide to the natural history of Venezuela for the British publisher WildGuides .

When not working on conservation projects, Chris leads tours to a growing number of destinations that include Texas, Arizona, Mexico, Belize, Costa Rica, Panamá, Venezuela, Trinidad & Tobago, Brazil and Peru.

Chris is a staff leader for Tucson-based Borderland Tours and the British company Naturetrek. In addition he has guided tours for Birdquest, Caligo Ventures, Danish Ornithological Society, Lost World Expeditons, Maine Audubon Society, Miller Tours, Paradise Expeditions, Stichting Natureizen, Tur-V Special Tours and Venezuelan Audubon Society. His individual clients have included Paul and Anne Ehrlich and Lord Michael Heseltine.

Contact Chris by email.

Borderland Tours, Arizona
(Photo: Jim Helminski)