Meet Doug
Author, filmmaker and naturalist.
Doug Peacock has published widely on wilderness issues ranging from grizzly bears to American bison, from the Sierra Madres of the Sonoran Desert to the fjords of British Columbia, from the tigers of Siberia to the blue sheep of Nepal.
Photo by Scott T. Baxter
Doug Peacock
About the Author
Peacock, a disabled Vietnam veteran and ex-Green Beret medic, was the real-life model for Edward Abbey’s George Washington Hayduke. For his service in Vietnam, Doug was awarded the Soldier’s Medal, the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry and the Bronze Star.
His books include Grizzly Years: In Search of the American Wilderness, ¡Baja!, Walking It Off: A Veteran’s Chronicle of War and Wilderness, The Essential Grizzly: The Mingled Fates of Men and Bears, and Was It Worth It: A Wilderness Warrior’s Long Trail Home.
The American Academy of Arts & Letters recognized Peacock with a 2022 literature award, and he was named a Guggenheim and Lannan Fellow in for his work on archaeology, climate change and the peopling of North America, published in 2013 as In the Shadow of the Sabertooth: A Renegade Naturalist Considers Global Warming, the Arrival of the First Americans and the Terrible Beasts of the Pleistocene.
Doug was the subject of a feature film about grizzlies and Vietnam, Peacock’s War, which premiered on PBS’s Nature; Peacock’s War won the grand prizes at the Telluride Mountainfilm and the Snowbird Film Festivals. He also was the subject of a documentary short film, Grizzly Country by Ben Moon (Moonhouse, 2018), and of the upcoming full-length film, Blank Spots on the Map by Maaike Middleton. As well, he and Middleton co-produced several award-winning short films including The Beast of Our Time and The Return of the Grizzly.
He has made multiple appearances on Fresh Air and been featured on other NPR segments including This American Life and the podcast Home of the Brave with Scott Carrier. He has appeared on television shows including the Today Show, Good Morning America, NBC Evening News, PM Magazine, Sesame Street, American Sportsman and Democracy Now, among others.
Doug co-founded the Wildlife Damage Review, Vital Ground, and Round River Conservation Studies, and served on the board of the Raincoast Conservation Society. For more than 25 years, he served as chairman of the board of directors for Round River, which works with Indigenous people and governments in Africa, North, South and Central America to develop region-wide conservation strategies protecting and enhancing intact ecosystems. He has led numerous organizations dedicated to the welfare of grizzly bears in the lower 48 states, most recently the Grizzly Guardians.
Peacock lives in Emigrant, Montana, with his wife Andrea, two collie dogs and one orange tabby cat, and spends considerable time in southeast Utah, the lower Sonoran Desert, and with the grizzlies of Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks.
“Doug Peacock is a humble warrior, fearless and honest, with a heart as big as the wild country he loves.”
—Terry Tempest Williams
“Doug Peacock is the wild prophet this world needs. In work and words given to protecting griz and wilderness, inspiration lives.”
—J. Drew Lanham
“The only way to stop Peacock is to cut off his head and bury it where he can't find it.”