Michael Tobias

My most current project - with Jane Gray Morrison - was the unveiling of our Dancing Star Foundation film "Yasuni - A Meditation on Life," that premiered at the Rio+20 United Nations Conference in mid-June, as part of the Ecuadorian presence at the Summit. Yasuni is without doubt one of the most important ecological challenges this human generation has ever confronted. The biological stakes have never been higher. See http://mptf.undp.org/yasuni. For the most current website on my work, and that of my partner and spouse, Jane Gray Morrison, go to: www.michaelcharlestobias.org, or www.michaeltobias.org, and www.dancingstarfoundation.org. My many initiatives and collaborations encompass innovative educational outreach approaches to art and zoological history, ecological anthropology and aesthetics, the history of ideas, exploration, environmental psychology, comparative literature, philosophy and ethics, global biodiversity field research, systematics, deep demography and animal rights. I study zoosemiotics and ethology, and the critical links between human demographic pressure and the diverse, remaining habitats on Earth. I did my PhD at the History of Consciousness Department of the University of California-Santa Cruz and have taught at a number of colleges and universities, including Dartmouth, the University of New Mexico (where I once held the Garrey Carruthers Chair of Honors), and the University of California-Santa Barbara (where I was a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Environmental Studies, as well as a Regents Lecturer). I am the author of nearly 50 books - non-fiction works like "World War III: Population & The Biosphere at the End of the Millennium," and "A Vision of Nature: Traces of the Original World," and fiction - like my recent novel, "Chateau Beyond Time" (Bestiarium in the German edition). I have also written, directed, and/or produced nearly 150 films -like the ten-hour dramatic miniseries, "Voice of the Planet" for Turner Broadcasting (based upon my novel by the same title), "Antarctica- The Last Continent," "Black Tide," World War III," "Mad Cowboy," "No Vacancy," and "A Day in the Life of India," all focusing primarily on social, bio-cultural, ecological and humanitarian issues, both documentary and drama. My field-research has taken me to well over 90 countries. See www.sanctuary-thebook.org, and www.hotspots-thefilm.org, and http://zorbapress.com/?page_id=90.