News

In memory of Lawrence S. Hamilton

18.10.2016

Mountain expert and environmental leader Lawrence “Larry” S. Hamilton passed away on 6 October 2016. During his lifetime, Larry Hamilton was a global leader in researching and raising awareness about mountain issues. He was a member of the World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) since the 1970s and led the Mountain Theme for almost 25 years. His countless contributions towards understanding and addressing the challenges of mountain communities and ecosystems helped promote sustainable mountain development globally. The following excerpt was taken from a piece written by Adrian Phillips, former WCPA Chair 1994-2000:

We have lost one of the great architects of protected areas worldwide. After a short illness, Larry Hamilton died on 6 October near his home in Vermont. His beloved wife, Linda, was with him. Larry was 91. But his youthful energy and joie de vivre survived to the end, and this made him seem much younger than he was. So he leaves a real gap in my life and in that of lots of other World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) people who knew him. Many were moved to write on hearing of his death, calling him “a lovely person”, “a wise counsellor”, “a great champion of conservation”, “a marvellous friend” and “a man of great humour”. People loved and admired Larry because they recognized the deep morality that guided his love of nature and his view of the world. He believed in peace unto nature, and peace among humanity.

After service as a Royal Navy pilot in the Second World War, Larry developed a career in forestry, initially in Canada, then at Cornell University, which expanded into natural resources policy and planning. Working as an academic and a practitioner, his interests took him to many parts of the world. He first made his mark in WCPA in the 1980s - at that time it was CNPPA, the Commission on National Parks and Protected Areas - when he was Senior Fellow of the East West Center in Hawai’i. He brought to our Commission a passion for all things montane - from mountain peoples to sacred forests and cloud forests.

Under Larry’s leadership, the mountain theme became one of the strongest global networks of experts within our wider family of protected areas leaders. He built and led the Commission’s constituency of mountain enthusiasts and experts between 1992 (the Caracas Parks Congress) until 2003, retiring as Vice Chair at the Durban World Park’s Congress. He brought them together in numerous WCPA mountain workshops - such as those in Hawaii (1991), Australia (1995), Canada (1996) and South Africa (2003) - which produced valuable products and helped build a formidable esprit de corps among the “mountaineers”. Larry’s mountain network numbered over 400 by the time he retired.

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News and photo by Adrian Phillips, IUCN