Barbara Wertheim Tuchman was an American historian and author. She won the Pulitzer Prize twice, for The Guns of August (1962), a best-selling history of the prelude to and the first month of World War I, and Stilwell and the American Experience in China (1971), a biography of General Joseph Stilwell.
James Mackenzie Fallows is an American writer and journalist. He is a former national correspondent for The Atlantic. His work has also appeared in Slate, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker and The American Prospect, among others. He is a former editor of U.S. News & World Report, and as President Jimmy Carter's chief speechwriter for two years was the youngest person ever to hold that job.
Richard Thomas Mabey is a writer and broadcaster, chiefly on the relations between nature and culture.
The bharal, also called the blue sheep, is a caprine native to the high Himalayas. It is the only member of the genus Pseudois. It occurs in India, Bhutan, China, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan. The Helan Mountains of Ningxia have the highest concentration of bharal in the world, with 15 bharals per km2 and 30,000 in total.
Peter Matthiessen was an American novelist, naturalist, wilderness writer, zen teacher and onetime CIA agent. A co-founder of the literary magazine The Paris Review, he was the only writer to have won the National Book Award in both nonfiction and fiction. He was also a prominent environmental activist.
Khenpo Tsültrim Gyamtso Rinpoche is a prominent scholar yogi in the Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. He teaches widely in the West, often through songs of realization, his own as well as those composed by Milarepa and other masters of the past. "Tsültrim Gyamtso" translates to English as "Ocean of Ethical Conduct".
Hemis National Park is a high-elevation national park in Ladakh, India. Globally famous for its snow leopards, it is believed to have the highest density of them in any protected area in the world. It is the only national park in India that is north of the Himalayas, the largest notified protected area in India and is the second largest contiguous protected area, after the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve and surrounding protected areas. The park is home to a number of species of endangered mammals, including the snow leopard. Hemis National Park is India's protected area inside the Palearctic realm, outside the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary northeast of Hemis, and the proposed Tso Lhamo Cold Desert Conservation Area in North Sikkim.
Khunjerab National Park is a national park in Gilgit Baltistan, Pakistan. Khunjerab National Park is Pakistan's third largest national park, and is adjacent to the Taxkorgan Natural Reserve in China.
The Marco Polo sheep is a subspecies of argali sheep, named after Marco Polo. Their habitat are the mountainous regions of Central Asia. Marco Polo sheep are distinguishable mostly by their large size and spiraling horns. Their conservation status is "near threatened" and efforts have been made to protect their numbers and keep them from being hunted. It has also been suggested that crossing them with domestic sheep could have agricultural benefits.
Rebecca L. Skloot is an American science writer who specializes in science and medicine. Her first book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010), was one of the best-selling new books of 2010, staying on The New York Times Bestseller list for over 6 years and eventually reaching #1. It was adapted into a movie by George C. Wolfe, which premiered on HBO on April 22, 2017, and starred Rose Byrne as Skloot, and Oprah Winfrey as Lacks's daughter Deborah.
Thubten Chodron, born Cheryl Greene, is an American Tibetan Buddhist nun, author, teacher, and the founder and abbess of Sravasti Abbey, the only Tibetan Buddhist training monastery for Western nuns and monks in the United States. Chodron is a central figure in the reinstatement of the Bhikshuni ordination of women. She is a student of the 14th Dalai Lama, Tsenzhab Serkong Rinpoche, Lama Thubten Yeshe, Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, and other Tibetan masters. She has published many books on Buddhist philosophy and meditation, and is co-authoring with the Dalai Lama a multi-volume series of teachings on the Buddhist path, The Library of Wisdom and Compassion.
The Trans himalaya, or "Gangdise – Nyenchen Tanglha range", is a 1,600-kilometre-long (990 mi) mountain range in China, India and Nepal, extending in a west–east direction parallel to the main Himalayan range. Located north of Yarlung Tsangpo river on the southern edge of the Tibetan Plateau, the Transhimalaya is composed of the Gangdise range to the west and the Nyenchen Tanglha range to the east.
Floyd Skloot is an American poet, novelist, and memoirist. Some of his work concerns his experience with neurological damage caused by a virus contracted in 1988.
George Beals Schaller is a German-born American mammalogist, biologist, conservationist and author. Schaller is recognized by many as the world's preeminent field biologist, studying wildlife throughout Africa, Asia and South America. Born in Berlin, Schaller grew up in Germany, but moved to Missouri as a teen. He is vice president of Panthera Corporation and serves as chairman of their Cat Advisory Council. Schaller is also a senior conservationist at the Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society.
The National Book Award for Nonfiction is one of five U.S. annual National Book Awards, which are given by the National Book Foundation to recognize outstanding literary work by U.S. citizens. They are awards "by writers to writers". The panelists are five "writers who are known to be doing great work in their genre or field".
Sy Montgomery is an American naturalist, author and scriptwriter who writes for children as well as adults.
Chang Tang National Nature Reserve lies in the northern Tibetan Plateau. It is the third-largest land nature reserve in the world, after the Northeast Greenland National Park and Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, with an area of over 334,000 km2 (129,000 sq mi), making it bigger than 183 countries. Administratively, it lies in Xainza County and Biru County of the Nagqu Prefecture. With the more recently established adjoining reserves listed below there is now a total of 496,000 km2 of connected Nature Reserves, which represents an area almost as large as Spain and bigger than 197 other countries.
The Taxkorgan Nature Reserve is a nature reserve in Kashgar Prefecture, Xinjiang, China. It is situated around the Taghdumbash Pamir of Pamir Mountains and Karakorum Mountains. It covers about 14,000 square kilometres (5,400 sq mi) was established in 1984 mainly to protect the rare Marco Polo sheep and Tibetan argali. It has since also served to protect other species such as the snow leopard.
Karna Shakya is a Nepalese environmentalist, conservationist, hotel entrepreneur, writer and philanthropist. Shakya is a forester by academic qualification. He served as a wildlife officer and pioneered in establishing the first National Park in Nepal. He resigned from his government job, entered the tourism business in 1970, and now owns a chain of eco-friendly hotels in major touristic cities like Kathmandu, Pokhara, chitwan and Lumbini.
