About Greg Estes and Thalia GrantBorn in the United States, Greg Estes first arrived in Galápagos in 1982 leading the Cambridge Darwin Centenary Galápagos Expedition to conduct research on the feeding ecology of marine iguanas. With a degree in Biology from the University of London, England, Greg stayed to assist with several other ecological projects, including studies on sperm whales and the endangered Galápagos petrel. Most recently Greg and his wife Thalia retraced Darwin's footsteps through Galapagos using information from the original notebooks and manuscripts of the famous voyage. Their research is published in "Notes and Records of the Royal Society", September 2000. Greg has lectured extensively on Darwin's voyage, including a talk at the 1999 Galápagos symposium at San Francisco University, and is currently writing a book about Darwin in Galápagos. Greg has served as a licensed naturalist guide of the Galápagos National Park Service since 1982 and continues to work as naturalist and expeditions leader in the islands. He has worked with the film production In The Wild, and guided academy award winners Richard Dreyfuss and Cliff Robertson and Emmy Award winning film producer Howard Hall. He is in high demand by university and natural history organizations alike and among the institutions he has guided/led are the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, World Wildlife Fund, National Geographic, Stanford University, Johns Hopkins University, Nature Conservancy, St. Louis Zoo, Chatham College, Agnes Scott College, Washington & Lee University, New York Botanical Gardens, New York Audubon Society, Milwaukee Zoo, Staten Island Zoo, North Carolina State Museum of Natural Sciences, Georgia Conservancy, University of Georgia, and the Dayton Museum of Natural History. Greg also works periodically as a naturalist in the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the Antarctic. Through his work with video Greg actively promotes the protection of the Galapagos marine environment, which is becoming increasingly threatened by the impact of indiscriminate illegal fishing. He has produced several videos including a general interest video about Galápagos called Timeless and Fearless, an educational video on pollution in the islands and a video on the evacuation of giant tortoises threatened by the eruption of Cerro Azul Volcano on Isabela Island in 1998. Greg has travelled extensively in North, Central and South America, and Europe. His explorations have included an ascent of Cotopaxi in Ecuador, which is one of the highest active volcanoes in the world. Greg lives in Galapagos with his wife Thalia. Born in Canada, Thalia Grant first came to the Galápagos islands as a child of six, accompanying her parents Drs Peter and Rosemary Grant at the beginning of their long-term study of Darwin's finches. Between 1973 and 1997 she made annual visits to Galápagos, of 2 to 6 months duration, initially to assist with her parents field research and later to conduct ecological studies of her own. These field studies have afforded her a unique and intimate knowledge of almost every island in Galápagos. With a degree in biology from the University of California at Santa Cruz, she has published her research on the Galápagos dove, Galápagos lava lizard and most recently, Darwin's visit to the islands in 1835. She has also studied the social behavior of the Galápagos fiddler crab and the diet of the short-eared owl. In 1991 she conducted and published a population study of lizards and tuatara on Stephens Island in New Zealand and guided HRH Prince Philip on a tour of this WWF sponsored project. Ever since a child Thalia has loved to sketch from nature. An accomplished artist, her illustrations of Darwin's finches feature in the Pulitzer Prize winning book The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner. She is currently working on a children's book that takes place in Galápagos. Thalia has travelled extensively through Europe, including Scandinavia, and North, Central and South America and New Zealand. |
For more information, feel free to contact us at greg@galapagosconnection.net.