Eduardo Santana Castellón

Eduardo Santana is Director of the Museo de Ciencias Ambientales at the Centro Cultural Universitario de la Universidad de Guadalajara (UdeG). Of Cuban origin, Santana grew up in Puerto Rico and studied at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Since 1985, he has been a professor of wildlife and natural resource management, and urban sustainability at UdeG. He created various programs such as undergraduate & graduate degrees, research institutes, civil associations, natural protected areas and novel local environmental governance mechanisms. With collaborators he created the José Emilio Pacheco City-Nature Literature Prize, the Socio-Environmental Film Exhibition and the International Colloquium on Biodiversity, Natural Resources and Society. He has actively worked with Nahua and Wixárika indigenous communities in the defense of their resources in western Mexico, and he designed Cuba’s conservation program for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). He has been part of the governance boards of the Society for Conservation Biology, the Association for Tropical Biology and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, as well as jury member in various film, journalism and ornithology awards. Individually and collectively he has received more than 40 national and international awards. He has also directed 30+ undergraduate and graduate theses, has generated 150+ technical and popular publications, and has been a guest speaker at some 50+ institutions.