Cloud Ridge Naturalists

Cloud Ridge Naturalists is one of the oldest and most respected nonprofit environmental education programs in North America. In 1979, our inaugural year, the word ecotourism was unknown, and we were pioneers in providing travel opportunities that blended natural history education with exploration. For the past 40 years, our field discovery seminars have taken us to some of the most spectacular wilderness areas on Earth. Moving beyond the “last great place” model that drives traditional ecotourism, our educational efforts over the decades enabled several thousand participants to become better-informed conservation stewards—not just “snapshot” sojourners of our changing world. Given the environmental challenges looming on the horizon, we have chosen to curtail our touring program in order to reduce our overall “travel footprint” and the unavoidable impacts of tourism on fragile ecosystems.

Cloud Ridge Publishing

Cloud Ridge Publishing (CRP) was launched in 2009 as the nonprofit book publishing arm of Cloud Ridge Naturalists. Our publishing philosophy mirrors our foundational belief that natural history education inspires and promotes environmental advocacy and stewardship. Building a consensus for conservation action worldwide begins with bridging the ever-widening disconnect that exists between our technology-driven lives and the natural world. For Cloud Ridge to be an effective force for change we need to reach out to a broader audience than ever before with a conservation message that resonates across generations.

Our publishing focus on global ocean conservation embraces the extraordinary role that oceans play in our lives. The world’s five ocean basins are interconnected by major surface and deep-water currents in a circulation system that creates a global ocean covering more than 70% of the earth’s surface. The global ocean is the world’s largest wilderness, with a lineage of life at least 3 billion years older than anything above sea level. Marine scientists estimate that 90% of the world’s biodiversity once resided in the global ocean—and that human actions have degraded ocean ecosystems more in the past 50 years than in all of human history.

Thread by thread, the interconnections that exist between global climate, the oceans, and terrestrial ecosystems are being revealed. The consequences of ignoring the environmental challenges facing the global ocean are truly profound. Conserving life in the sea and on land requires that we view the world through a vastly different lens—and that we all work together to inspire the next generation of ocean stewards.