Recipient of the Wilburforce Foundation Conservation Leadership Award, Karsten Heuer sadly passed away on November 5, 2024. He was announced dead in a statement on social media that says “Karsten Heuer was a biologist, wildlife and landscape defender, storyteller, author, husband, father, son and friend, and will be greatly missed by many.”
Who was Karsten Heuer?
Karsten Heuer was a wildlife scientist and park warden who worked in the Madikwe Game Reserve in South Africa, Slovakia, Poland, the Rockies’ Banff and Jasper National Parks, and Inuvik in Canada’s far north. He was awarded the Wilburforce Foundation Conservation Leadership Award and has devoted most of the last ten years to walking and skiing alongside some of the most endangered animals in North America.
He walked and skied from Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming to the Yukon Territory in Canada in 1998 and 1999 to draw attention to the Y2Y Conservation Initiative, a plan for a 1,900-mile network of core reserves and wildlife corridors. In Walking the Big Wild: From Yellowstone to Yukon on the Grizzly Bear’s Trail, he details this journey.
About Karsten Heuer
Together with his wife, Leanne Allison, he embarked on a five-month journey on foot and skis in 2003 to follow the Porcupine Caribou Herd from their Yukon winter range to their endangered Alaskan calving grounds and back. His book and the corresponding National Film Board of Canada documentary, Being Caribou, are about this.
Karsten completed a number of incredible trips in the Yellowstone to Yukon region, from the Arctic Circle in the Yukon to the spine of the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming. He supported grizzly bears, caribou, wolves, elk, and other animals, as well as the essential corridors that sustain our wilderness and wildlife. From his leadership at the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative to the 2,100-mile walk over the Rocky Mountains that brought attention to the need for wildlife corridors, his work has had a significant impact on conservation.
