Parks Man Dr. Daan
Vreugdenhil
Parks
Man Dr. Daan Vreugdenhil is author of this website and founding father of Parks
and Tribes. He dedicated his life to the conservation of nature and national
parks. https://www.facebook.com/DrDaanVreugdenhil,
https://www.linkedin.com/in/drdaanvreugdenhil/.
Having started his
career in 1969
as a project officer of the IYF (now
YEE), he
dedicated his life to the conservation of nature and is among the world's most senior
conservation ecologists. Besides English, Daan speaks, Dutch, Afrikaans, German,
French, Spanish and Portuguese; he has traveled to 80+ countries, many in the
context of his work in service of conservation. His slogan:
CONSERVATIONISTS NEVER GIVE UP!
A practical
planner and problem solver, with a
PhD from
Wageningen University,
his career of half a century includes workin for the
FAO of the
United
Nations, The Dutch equivalent of the USA Corps of
Engineers,
Rijkswaterstaat,
Haskoning, the
Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), The
World Bank, the
German
Development Organization (GIZ) and a variety of other prestigious
international
institutions. Read about his
holistic conservation approach.
parks tours. Little known to Ecuadorians, he
was part of the
United
Nations team that selected the first
39 protected areas of Ecuador,
now
50. Yasuní
and Cuyabeno were his prime selections for the Amazon Region of
Ecuador, the latter of which he he later recommended to be expanded
from originally 150,000ha to 600,000ha, together with then Cuyabeno
director Prof. Dr. Flavio Coello
and Parks and Tribes partner. Daan is also the founding father of
the Cuyabeno Lodge and co-manager of the
Cofan Lodge,
owned by Randy Borman MSc
and his son Felipe.
Having started ecotourism
in 1985 with the Cuyabeno Lodge, he has been the pioneer of ecotourism in
ecuador, long before other tour operators became involved, and he has
single-handedly, initiated ecotourism in the northern part of Cuyabeno.
As a national parks
conservation expert, Daan has been extremely worried about national parks being
underutilized, and thereby lack political interest, which often results in an
area being invaded and destroyed. He decided to dedicate the last years of his
professional life to the development of national parks tours. After all, with
his knowledge of national parks, his broad travel experience and his 30+ year of
experience in the ecotourism business, who has more experience in developing
great tours to national parks? That is why he founded
National Parks Tours Worldwide. |
