Biography of John Muir Laws

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Short biography

Naturalist, educator and artist John (Jack) Muir Laws delights in exploring the natural world and sharing this love with others. For six years, John Muir Laws backpacked the Sierra Nevada to research and illustrate The Laws Guide to the Sierra Nevada, a pocket-size field guide to over 1,700 species found in the Sierra Nevada. The guide includes 2,710 original watercolor paintings was reviewed by educators, naturalists, and scientists throughout the country, and was intensively field tested by adults and youth. This guide helps visitors or residents of the Sierra understand and appreciate the biodiversity of the region. This comprehensive and easy to use guide allows botanists to identify the insects that come to their flowers, birders to identify the trees in which the birds perch, or hikers to identify the stars overhead at night.

Laws is deeply committed to stewardship of nature and collaborates with organizations throughout the state to this end. He is currently coordinating efforts to create a standards based, sixth through eighth grade curriculum to help teachers convey a love of nature and an understanding of biodiversity to their students through field studies and nature sketching. As a part of this project, he is working secure funding to donate sets of field guides to every middle and high school in the Sierra Nevada.

Laws has worked as an environmental educator for over 25 years in California, Wyoming, and Alaska. He teaches classes on natural history, conservation biology, scientific illustration, and field sketching. He is trained as a wildlife biologist and is an associate of the California Academy of Sciences. His illustrations capture the feeling of the living plant or animal, while also including details critical for identification. In the summer of 2004, Laws also published Sierra Birds: a Hiker's Guide. He is a regular contributor to Bay Nature magazine with his "Naturalists Notebook" column.

Short biography for presentations

Laws will present an illustrated lecture about the natural history of the Sierra Nevada, and the process of creating a field guide. This engaging program will highlight some of the beautifully and amazing species in the Sierra and the relationships between them. Laws will also discuss some of the conservation challenges in the Sierra Nevada and what stewards of nature are doing to confront them.

Jack has worked as an environmental educator for over 25 years in California, Wyoming, and Alaska. He teaches classes on natural history, conservation biology, scientific illustration, and field sketching. He is trained as a wildlife biologist and is an associate of the California Academy of Sciences. His illustrations capture the feeling of the living plant or animal, while also including details critical for identification. In the summer of 2004, Laws published Sierra Birds: a Hiker's Guide. He is also a regular contributor to Bay Nature magazine with his "Naturalists Notebook" column. He is currently coordinating efforts to create sixth through eighth grade curriculum to help teachers convey a love of nature and an understanding of biodiversity to their students through field studies and nature sketching

Extended Biography

Naturalist, educator, artist, and author John (Jack) Muir Laws delights in exploring the natural word and sharing this love with others. He has worked as an environmental educator for over 25 years in California, Wyoming, and Alaska. He has written and illustrated field guides on the natural history of California and teaches classes on natural history, conservation biology, scientific illustration, and field sketching.

Jack Laws interest in natural history and art developed as he started birding and keeping detailed illustrated journals. He began working in environmental education while in high school and college. While earning his B.S. at UC Berkeley in Conservation and Resource Studies, he worked as an interpretive aid at a regional park in Berkeley, worked summers at the Teton Science School and started leading adult education classes at the California Academy of Sciences. He then served as a naturalist at Walker Creek environmental education center, where he refined techniques for incorporating field journaling into the science curriculum. After getting his Masters in Wildlife Biology at University of Montana, he returned to California Academy of Sciences as the senior environmental educator, then manager of field studies. Most recently, he completed a degree in Scientific Illustration at the University of California at Santa Cruz and is now an Associate in the Research Division of the California Academy of Sciences.

In the summer of 2004, Laws published Sierra Birds: a Hiker's Guide. His most recent book, The Laws Guide to the Sierra Nevada, is an illustrated field guide to more than 1,700 species of plants and animals and is beautifully illustrated with 2,710 original watercolor paintings. This comprehensive and easy to use guide allows botanists to identify the insects that come to their flowers, birders to identify the trees in which the birds perch, or hikers to identify the stars overhead at night. His illustrations capture the feeling of the living plant or animal, while also including details critical for identification. He is also a regular contributor to Bay Nature magazine with his "Naturalists Notebook" column.

Laws is currently coordinating efforts to create a curriculum to tie the field guide to the State of California education standards and secure funding to donate sets of field guides to every elementary and high school in the Sierra Nevada and teaching field sketching and natural history classes throughout the state.