Dr. John Terborgh is a conservation biologist who has operated the Cocha Cashu Biological Station in Manú National Park, Peru. He was a professor at the University of Maryland and later at Princeton University. In 1989, he joined the faculty of Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and founded the Duke University Center for Tropical Conservation.

In 1992, John was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and was honored with the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal by the National Academy of Sciences in 1996 for his book Diversity and the Tropical Rainforest—he has published numerous books and articles on conservation. In 2005, he was elected Honorary Fellow of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation.