Ecological anthropologist James D. Nations has spent the past 30 years establishing and protecting national parks and indigenous territories throughout Latin America and the United States. He served 11 years as Vice President of the National Parks Conservation Association and 13 years as Vice President for Latin America at Conservation International. 

 A Fulbright Research Scholar in Guatemala and a Tinker Foundation Post-doctoral researcher in Central America, he earned BS and MS degrees from the University of North Texas, MA and Ph.D. degrees from Southern Methodist University, and did post-doctoral research through the Center for Latin American Studies, University of California-Berkeley. 

 He is the author of The Maya Tropical Forest (University of Texas Press 2006), Tropical Rainforests: An Endangered Environment (Scholastic 1986), and editor of Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Tropical Forest (Conservation International 2000).  In 2017, he published Maya Lacandón: el Idioma y el Medio Ambiente, the first dictionary of that indigenous group's native language.