Founder and Executive Director, Wild Heritage

Cyril Kormos is Founder and Executive Director of Wild Heritage, a small NGO based in Berkeley, California, whose mission is to protect and restore ecosystem integrity and safeguard biocultural diversity around the world. Cyril sits on the Steering Committee for IUCN’s World Commission on Protected Areas as Vice-Chair for World Heritage, and on IUCN’s World Heritage Panel. He is also a Trustee of Wild Europe, an organization focused on wilderness conservation in Europe. He was a Lui-Walton Innovator’s Fellow at Conservation International from 2016-2018 and became a National Geographic Explorer in 2018. Cyril was also a Visiting Scholar at the University of California at Berkeley in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management in 2015-2016. Cyril has edited several books, including A Handbook on International Wilderness Law and Policy (Fulcrum Publishing) and three books in the CEMEX Nature Series: Earth’s Legacy: Natural World Heritage and A Geography of Hope: Saving Primary Forests and Nature’s Solutions to Climate Change. He has also published extensively in scientific and policy journals. Cyril holds a B.A. in English from the University of California, Berkeley, an M.Sc. in Politics of the World Economy from the London School of Economics, and a J.D. from the George Washington University Law School.