Harvey Locke

Harvey Locke is a conservationist, writer, and photographer. He is a recognized global leader in the field of parks, wilderness, wildlife and large landscape conservation. He is a founder of the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, with the goal to create a continuous corridor for wildlife from Yellowstone National Park in the United States to the Yukon in Northern Canada. In 2017, Locke was appointed chair of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas Beyond the Aichi Targets Task Force, with the goal of ensuring the new global conservation targets set at the next Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2020 are meaningful for achieving the conservation of nature and halting of biodiversity loss.

In 2013, Locke spoke in Ootacamund and in Mumbai, India about large landscape conservation and Nature Needs Half and wrote a feature story on those ideas for Sanctuary Asia.

Locke is a frequent keynote speaker at major conservation conferences and universities throughout North America. In 2013, he was the distinguished visiting lecturer at the University of Montana and Montana State University Institute on Ecosystems. He gave keynote speeches in Banff, Canada on International Leadership, Parks Canada's Contribution to the world at the official 125th anniversary celebration of Canada's National Park System on November 2010 and at the Sixteenth Annual Symposium of the Stegner Center, Wildlife Conservation in the 21st Century on Large Landscape Conservation in March 2011.

Locke was the Liberal candidate in the provincial district of Calgary-Foothills in the 1989 Alberta provincial election, narrowly losing to Progressive Conservative Pat Black. He went on to serve as President of the Alberta Liberal Party from 1995 to 1997, and chaired the party's 1997 election campaign. In the Summer of 2012 Locke announced he would seek the Liberal Party of Canada nomination in the riding of Calgary Centre, which had been left vacant after the resignation of Conservative Lee Richardson. On September 22, 2012, he won 213 of 342 ballots cast in the party's nomination contest, defeating three other candidates.

Locke conceived and co-curated the 2011 art show, Yellowstone to Yukon: the Journey of Wildlife and Art, a collaboration of the National Museum of Wildlife Art, Jackson, WY, the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Banff, Canada, artist Dwayne Harty, and the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative

Locke served as president or vice president of the CPAWS for many years, and he is now its senior advisor on conservation. He is a founder and senior advisor for Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, and was the Vice President for Conservation Strategy at the WILD Foundation in Boulder, Colorado from 2009 through 2011. Locke's writing and photography have been published in newspapers, magazines and peer reviewed journals in nine countries. He has lectured at many universities and spoken on national parks, wilderness and large landscape conservation at conferences around the world. He has testified on national parks legislation before Parliamentary committees, and led conservation campaigns. In 1999, Locke was named one of Time Magazine Canada's leaders for the 21st century. In 2013, he received the J.B. Harkin Medal for Conservation and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.

In October 2009, Locke was invited as the keynote speaker for the inaugural Thomas Foundation Oration in conjunction with The Nature Conservancy and the Thomas Foundation Oration in Australia during that country's first Linking Landscape Summit and spoke in Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne. In 2013, he was invited to Darwin and Sydney to speak about large landscape from Kimberly to Cape and Great Eastern Ranges.

During the opening ceremony of the Ninth World Wilderness Congress (WILD9) in Mérida, Mexico on November 6, 2009, Locke addressed Mexican President Felipe Calderon on behalf of the delegates. At WILD9, the first series of stamps on wilderness was initiated by the Mexican Postal Service and cancelled by the President Calderon to celebrate Tierras Sylvestres. The series celebrates five wilderness areas in Mexico, the United States, Canada, Russia and South Africa and a picture taken by Locke of Canada's Nahanni National Park. He gave the closing plenary at WILD 9 which launched the global Nature Needs Half movement.

Locke has been invited to engage on parks and wilderness in Europe. He spoke at the Czech EC Presidency Conference on Wilderness in Prague, Czech Republic in 2009, gave a keynote speech on Europe's National Parks in a global context for Europarc Federation in Abruzzo, Italy in October 2010, spoke at the Belgian EC Presidency Conference on Wilderness Restoration in Brussels in November 2010, and at the launch of the Rewilding Europe initiative in Brussels, November 2010. In 2013, he chaired the plenary session on Nature Needs Half and spoke at WILD 10 in Salamanca, Spain.

Locke has done interviews with all varieties of media including Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, National Public Radio, Nippon Television, National Geographic, Nature of Things, La Presse, Globe and Mail, National Post, Geo Plein Air, Backpacker Magazine and several documentary films, including a 10-minute feature on CBC National News, September 2008 and on Découverte à Radio-Canada, and Star Alliance and National Geographic partnership (Biosphere Connections), and Der Spiegel TV ZDF in Germany

His photographs are used extensively by conservation groups around the world and were shown at the American Museum of Natural History for the Yellowstone to Yukon exhibit in 2006. They were also featured in the iPad portion of the 2011 exhibit: Yellowstone to Yukon: the Journey of Wildlife and Art at the National Museum of Wildlife Art and a companion photo exhibit the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies.

In 1999 Locke was named one of Canada's leaders for the 21st century by Time Magazine Canada. In 2013, he received the J.B. Harkin Medal for Conservation and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal and in 2014 he was awarded the Fred M. Packard Award for outstanding service to protected areas by the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas at the World Parks Congress in Sydney, Australia. Locke also received in 2014 the Gold Leaf Award from the Canadian Council on Ecological Areas for his lifetime of extraordinary commitment and vision to advance the cause of parks, wilderness, ecological integrity and landscape connectivity in North America and the world. Locke is a co-founder of the Nature Needs Half Movement.

Locke (full name Gerald Timothy Harvey Locke) was born in 1959 to Ralphine Locke (née Harvey) and Dr. Gerald Lorne Locke, in Calgary, Alberta. His family counts among Southern Alberta's earliest European settlers and has been in the Bow Valley since the early 1870s. He grew up in southern Alberta where he attended Earl Grey Elementary School and Strathcona School for Boys in Calgary and in 1975 graduated from Strathcona-Tweedsmuir School, (Nil Nisi Optimum Notable Alumnus), in Dewinton, Alberta. In 1976, he spent a year in College Wildhorn, in Anzere, Switzerland. Back in Calgary, he first obtained a Bachelor of Arts in French and later a Bachelor of Laws in 1984 (with silver medal) from the University of Calgary. He was a lawyer and partner at MacKimmie Matthews law firm in downtown Calgary for 14 years and served as volunteer president of both Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) and the Alberta Liberal Party. In 1999, Harvey became a full-time conservationist dedicated to national parks, wilderness, large landscape and connectivity conservation and climate change. He is married to Marie-Eve Marchand and has two sons by a previous marriage.