Richard W. Halsey loves sharing the magic of Nature, especially when it comes to chaparral, California's most extensive native plant community. He started teaching natural history as a 16-year-old volunteer naturalist at the El Dorado Nature Center in Long Beach, California, enjoyed learning about biology and anthropology in college, then taught high school biology, chemistry, and physics for two decades, leading his students on dozens of wilderness experiences to discover the preciousness of life. Since founding and directing the California Chaparral Institute in 2004, Richard has written a handful of research papers, a couple books, a fair number of editorials, and has given hundreds of presentations, all concerning chaparral ecology and the importance of reestablishing our connection with Nature.

Jessica Carew Kraft is the author of Why We Need to Be Wild: One Woman’s Quest for Ancient Human Answers to 21st-Century Questions (Sourcebooks, 2023). An independent journalist trained in anthropology, she became a naturalist and wild food forager in the Sierra Foothills in Northern California

Warren Hern is a physician and epidemiologist. He is the author of "Abortion in the Age of Unreason: A Doctor's Account of Caring for Women Before and after Roe v. Wade."

James Van Lanen has spent nearly two decades as a professional anthropologist studying and working with indigenous hunter-gatherers on three continents. James is also an active subsistence hunter, fisher, and forager, extensively involved in the material arts of rewilding and bushcraft, mostly off-grid in the far north. He currently works as a Wildlife Technician for Alaska's Wood Bison Restoration Project and as an Environmental Specialist for the Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Association, a tribal NGO focused on salmon conservation. Human Rewilding in the 21st Century is his first book. He is currently working on three other books surrounding anthropology and the crisis of civilization. Some of his previous writings have appeared in the journal Hunter-Gatherer Research, Human Ecology, Oak Journal, Black and Green Review, and Wild Resistance.

Best known for the Boudica: Dreaming series, Manda Scott was once a veterinary surgeon and is now an award-winning novelist, smallholder, contemporary shamanic trainer and host of the international chart-topping Accidental Gods podcast. Taking a Masters in Regenerative Economics at Schumacher College taught her that hospicing modernity is our most urgent task--and that it's only possible if enough of us have road maps showing routes through from exactly where we are towards a future that works for all life. She is co-creator of the Thrutopian Writing Masterclass and her new novel, Any Human Power is a Thrutopian mytho-political thriller.

Tom Murphy is a professor emeritus of physics and astronomy/astrophysics at the University of California, San Diego.  Tom retired early from his academic career to focus on planetary limits and escaping the trap of modernity with the intent to learn more about ecological relationships in the community of life.

Marily Woodhouse is a 5th generation Californian, born and grew up in the Bay Area. She’s lived in the Battle Creek watershed since 1989, but spent time in the summers at her grandmother's cabin in Butte Meadows to the south, so has a lifelong experience of the area. She started Battle Creek Alliance in 2008 and Defiance Canyon Raptor Rescue in 2016.

Deanna Meyer is a long time environmental activist. She is on the
board of Deep Green Resistance, and is the founder and president of
Prairie Protection Colorado. Deanna lives in the Pike National Forest
and is currently working on a ballot measure that Coloradans will be
voting on in November with an organization Cats Aren't Trophies. This
measure will end all hunting of Colorado's bobcats, mountain lions, and lynx.

Richard Olson is Director of the Berea Urban Farm (Berea KY), an educational market garden with the mission to increase local food security and build community through urban agriculture. He previously was a member of the faculty at Berea College teaching courses in sustainability, ecological design and environmental justice, and managed research programs on the effects of air pollution on Western forests at the US Environmental Protection Agency lab in Corvallis Oregon. He has degrees in biology, ecology, and agronomy, and personal experience in small-scale farming and horse logging.

Borislav Prodanovic is a theologian, icon painter, artist, and musician from Serbia. He studied at the Orthodox Theological Institute in Belgrade, Serbia, and at the Protestant Theological Seminary in Novi Sad, Serbia, where he received his bachelor's and M.A. degree in Theology. His research interest and vision concern Orthodox theology and praxis in contemporary times. He has been especially interested in dialectical relations, tensions and constitutive dialogues between Orthodoxy and Feminist and Liberation theologies. Currently he conducts a PhD research on clergy sexual abuse in the Serbian Orthodox Church at the Free University of Amsterdam

Randy Robbins is an award winning wildlife and landscape photographer specializing in using remote cameras to capture intimate portraits of rare and elusive wildlife. The research Randy puts into his subjects and their behaviors has made him a sought after voice in advocating for their conservation. In 2019 Randy was recognized on the California Senate floor as the California Wildlife Photographer of the Year. In 2021 Randy captured one of the first close-up, high resolution photographs of a wild gray wolf ever taken in California, a species in the early stages of re-introducing itself to the state a century after being eradicated. Randy's work has been widely published and recognized in several national and international contests and venues, most recently as the first "highly commended" image ever taken with a cell phone to be recognized in the prestigious international Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest hosted by the Natural History Museum of London. His current focus is the Sierra Nevada Red Fox, a critically threatened endemic subspecies of fox existing in only a few alpine environments at high elevation in the Sierra Nevada and southern Cascades.